Promotion of Cultural Heritages Through A Virtual Museum Platform: Case Study Hagia Sophia

Abstract

The Digital World has become the most significant platform for spreading the written and visual documents about cultural and historical heritages in accordance with the recent developments on web based technologies. All kind of digital platforms are the primary tools to transfer local values to global scale. Nevertheless, it is not possible to say that these technological opportunities are efficiently used to promote museums keeping the inheritance and memory of societies. The aim of this study is to create a virtual museum platform including all kind of written and visual materials by 3D game technologies. Hagia Sophia has been selected as the case study area of this study and digitally reconstructed to use in the project. Unity game engine has been used in the study to prepare the application where people are capable to see and interactively walk through the Hagia Sophia in a digital environment. As a result of the study, a virtual museum platform working on Windows, Mac, Ios, Android, VR and similar digital platforms has been built.