‘Virtual museum’ concept aims to make the past interactive

A Scottish university is developing an “immersive virtual museum” that could change the way we view art, The Art Newspaper wrote.

Set to launch in April 2025, the University of Glasgow’s extended reality app allows users to “teleport” around virtual museums with no display cases, enabling them to “handle” precious objects that, in the real world, lie behind glass.

The digital “artifacts” are created using photogrammetry — a technique that stitches together hundreds of images to make a single 3D facsimile that can then be magnified or shrunk or spun around.

While extended reality cannot replicate a real museum, it can offer “an entirely different experience with different benefits,” one academic said.