Unearthing virtual history: using diverse interfaces to reveal hidden virtual worlds                                        

Steve Benford  , John Bowers  , Paul Chandler  , Luigina Ciolfi, Martin Flintham  , 
Mike Fraser  , Chris Greenhalgh  , Tony Hall  , Sten Olof Hellstrm , Shahram Izadi  ,
Tom Rodden    , Holger Schndelbach   , Ian Taylor                  
The Mixed Reality Laboratory, University of Nottingham, UK           
{sdb, pdc, mdf, mcf, cmg, sxi, tar, hms, imt} @cs.nott.ac.uk                      
Centre for User-Oriented IT-Design (CID), Royal Institute of Technology (KTH),
Stockholm, Sweden                                   
{bowers, soh} @nada,kth.se                                 
Interaction Design Centre, University of Limerick, Ireland         
{Luigina.Ciolfi, Tony.Hall} @ul.ie                              



Abstract. We describe an application in which museum visitors hunt for virtual 
history outdoors, capture it, and bring it back indoors for detailed inspection.
This application provides visitors with ubiquitous access to a parallel virtual
world as they move through an extended physical space. Diverse devices,        
including mobile wireless interfaces for locating hotspots of virtual activity 
outdoors, provide radically different experiences of the virtual depending upon
location, task, and available equipment. Initial reflections suggest that the  
physical design of such devices needs careful attention so as to encourage an  
appropriate style of use. We also consider the extension of our experience to  
support enacted scenes. Finally, we discuss potential benefits of using diverse
devices to make a shared underlying virtual world ubiquitously available       
throughout physical space.                                                     



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