Using Virtual Reality to Free Cultural Tourism from Travel Restrictions

With the project, it is aimed to examine both the technical and social dimensions of the subject by conducting a pilot study on the digitalization of Cultural Heritage, which has accelerated during the COVID-19 process but has been popular for the last ten years, in short, to bring the concept of Digital Heritage to the Cultural Heritage Management and Cultural Tourism of our country. Findings can be evaluated under the headings of "Archaeological Consistency", "Content Production", "Visitor Effect and Usability". Archaeological Consistency: In addition to the detailed processing of all known details of the temples subject to the project with the guidance of the Excavation Director and his team, in addition to the known data in question, suggestions for the completion of architectural plastic elements were developed based on the stonemason's marks on the architectural pieces. Content Production: The fact that the high quality and interactive content produced in the project is above the current capabilities of mobile imaging technologies necessitated the production of a second content by compromising the interactive experience, if not the image and detail quality. At this point, the need to develop suggestions for the solution of the current technological inadequacy has arisen. Visitor Impact and Usability: The survey conducted on content accessible via mobile devices presented two particularly important findings: 1. Almost all 97.06% of the users have a positive approach to the use of Virtual Reality in Cultural Tourism in the Future. 2. Although 61.76% of the users were aware of this technology before, 67.65% of the users had not experienced Virtual Reality Applications before. First of all, the current state of the temples was modeled with photogrammetry methods, the reconstruction of the said structures with 3D artificial models, the transfer of these outputs to the display device and the measurement of the Visitor Effect of the content through a survey. Although the problem of high-quality interactive content exceeding the capabilities of mobile devices has been overcome with non-interactive content within the project period of 6 months, suggestions have been developed not to sacrifice this unique quality. The first method is to produce lower volume content and upload it to the device as mobile application patches. The other method is for the user to experience the content on the server without uploading it to the mobile device with a browser-based application. Projects are being prepared for the development of both methods.