Interacting with the virtually recreated peranakans

Virtual Reality (VR) technology opens up many new possibilities. One of the new and upcoming areas this VR technology is rapidly being used for is in the Digital Heritage domain. With the abundant content and the need for preservation and conservation for cultural heritage, there has been an explosion of Digital Heritage projects worldwide. VR technology provides an important educational tool to recreate the cultural heritage content in an immersive high-quality 3D environment for the users to enter and experience the culture in real-time. Intuitive interaction techniques providing users other tools as an alternative to the conventional mouse and keyboard input also add to enhanced educational value. Here, we present a Digital Heritage project focusing on the Singapore region. We have selected the Peranakans and their Culture as the main topic for reconstruction using the VR technology. Innovative interaction techniques specific to the selected Digital Heritage content is also under development. This paper outlines the motivation, early developments, and implementation currently in progress.