More than Meets the Eye: The Benefits of Augmented Reality and Holographic Displays for Digital Cultural Heritage

Cultural heritage artifacts connect us to past generations and provide links to previous worlds that are beyond our reach. We developed TombSeer, an augmented reality application that aims to immerse the wearer in a museum space engaging two senses (seeing and gesturing) through a holographic heads-up interface that brings virtual, historical artifacts “back to life” through gestural interactivity. This article introduces the TombSeer software prototype and highlights the application of embodied interaction to museum visits using an emerging hardware platform for 3D interactive holographic images (e.g., Meta head-mounted display). This article discusses the TombSeer prototype's development and functionality testing with the Tomb of Kitines exhibit, which was conducted at The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada. TombSeer's embodied gestural and visual augmented reality experience functions to aesthetically enhance museum exhibits, cultural heritage sites, and galleries.