Informatica 40 (2016) 277–277 277 
Editors' Introduction to the Special Issue on ‟Virtual Reality in 
Cultural Heritage”
This Special Issue consists of a selection of the best 
papers from the 1st eHERITAGE Workshop held in 2016 
as a session of the 19th international multi-conference 
Information Society 2016. eHERITAGE (‘Expanding the 
Research and Innovation Capacity in Cultural Heritage 
Virtual Reality Applications’) is a Coordination and 
Support project) which is addressing the challenges 
described in the topic H2020-TWINN-2015 of the H2020 
Work programme. eHERITAGE project supports the 
training and transfer of know-how in the scientific area 
of virtual heritage, a discipline located at the intersection 
between new technologies and cultural heritage. 
Augmented and virtual reality, 3D immersive graphics, 
real-time haptics and intelligent systems, are all 
examples of technologies that can be used to provide 
cultural experiences in novel, more interactive ways.  
When preserving cultural heritage through means of 
virtual reality, researchers deal with a wide array of 
techniques and methods. From web-based virtual 
assistants to photogrammetry, there are thousands of 
studies out there which tackle multiple areas of interest, 
throughout various channels of communication.  
Coincidentally, the 1st eHERITAGE Workshop was 
held during the mid-term of the Horizon 2020, which is 
the largest research programme initiated by the EU in 
terms of financial support. One of the main goals of the 
EU is to finance projects which raise the awareness of 
the importance of heritage artefacts. In the last 25 years, 
a great community of scientists have learned, developed 
and promoted knowledge and skills needed to document, 
preserve and protect heritage.    
The 1st eHERITAGE workshop tried to cluster all 
the information available from the partners into just a 
few areas of interest. The selected papers come from the 
joint efforts of the 3 partners, namely the project leader 
Transilvania University of Brasov (Romania), Scuola 
Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa (Italy) and Jozef Stefan 
Institute of Ljubljana (Slovenia), and represent the work 
results of the first project year. They deal with two main 
categories: intelligent systems and virtual reality applied 
to the field of cultural heritage. The first paper by A. 
Tavčar, A. Csabam and E. Butila,  "Recommender 
system for virtual assistant supported museum tours" 
presents a web service for virtual museum tours based on 
intelligent virtual assistants that can learn user 
preferences and provide recommendations regarding 
museum exhibitions. The second paper by D. Kužnar, A. 
Tavčar, J. Zupančič and Mihai Duguleana,  "Virtual 
assistant platform", proposes a novel platform which 
enables the use of virtual assistants as additional services 
on websites or as a stand-alone application on mobile 
platforms. S. Butnariu, A. Georgescu and F. Gîrbacia 
present in the paper "Using a natural user interface to 
enhance the ability to interact with reconstructed virtual 
heritage environments" an assessment of the usability of 
natural User Interfaces used for navigation tasks in a 
Virtual Environment, as opposed to the traditional WIMP 
paradigm. The forth paper by M. Carrozzino, C. 
Evangelista and R. Galdieri, "Building a 3D interactive 
walkthrough in a digital storytelling classroom 
experience" presents a real time 3D walkthrough 
application based on interactive VR technologies and 
built with an interactive digital storytelling approach. 
The study was carried out with and for secondary school 
students in order to raise their awareness about their local 
heritage. The fifth paper by R. Brondi, M. Carrozzino, C. 
Lorenzini and F. Tecchia, "Using mixed reality and 
natural interaction in cultural heritage applications", 
presents a general architecture for Mixed Reality 
applications exploiting solutions based on Natural User 
Interfaces as interaction metaphors between the Virtual 
Environment and the user. The last paper, by C. 
Lorenzini, M. Carrozzino and C. Evangelista, "An 
interactive digital storytelling approach to explore books 
in virtual environments" presents the design and the 
architecture of an educational 3D application enabling 
reading books in Virtual Environments using an 
entertaining approach particularly suitable for young 
people. 
 
       
Marcello Carrozzino 
Mihai Duguleana