The ArchéoLab explores the past in virtual reality, amazing!

The walls of the museum are replaced by the vault of a night sky. Among the stars, on a transparent platform, three silhouettes wait. All you have to do is hand the person of your choice an hourglass to be projected into their time. Immediately, in a narrow corridor, lit by candles, a little girl asks you to go and serve wine to the masters. On the other side of the wall, the sounds of a banquet are heard. In the orange light of the end of a long summer day, four people enjoy oysters and shrimp, lying on a table while chatting. Around you stands the summer pavilion of the Roman villa of the Priory, as it was in the II^e century AD.

The “Portal to the Past” exhibition offers a unique virtual reality experience. Four stations allow you to put on a VR headset and grab a controller to play Sura, Servilus or Clothilde. Their three distinct stories feature the archaeological discoveries of the town of Pully – in the Neolithic period, in the Roman period and in the Burgundian period.

Although we are required to carry out some interactions with other characters, the main objective is to witness the daily life that takes place around us. “We tried to imagine how the relationships between individuals took place, their interactions and their intimacy,” explains Aurèle Cellérier, curator of the ArchéoLab and curator of the exhibition.

Designed in partnership between the ArchéoLab, a scientific committee and the Vevey studio Digital Kingdom, the three stories required a year of work for a gaming experience of around twenty minutes. “Many compromises had to be made due to technical, budgetary or scientific constraints,” indicates Aurèle Cellérier. For example, the characters we meet do not have faces, because their animation is complex and would have been too expensive.

One year of work

To guard against the motion sickness (seasickness) which can raise the stomach when moving in virtual reality, the developers have implemented a teleportation system. With the controller, all you have to do is point to the location you want to go to and click. Getting started with the game controls is made easier thanks to a quick tutorial in the welcome sequence. It is recommended to turn around, look up and down, in order to fully enjoy the architectural and landscape reconstructions. For people who cannot tolerate the headset or the loss of real references, a version on a touch table allows you to discover the scenarios.

Teenagers as target audience

The museum also exhibits a selection of objects that inspired the creation of virtual reality scenarios. In the windows, visitors will recognize, among other things, the boar’s tusk pectoral necklace from the Neolithic period, the bronze oil lamp with a horse’s head from the Roman period or even the fibulae (clasps holding clothing) from the Burgundian period.

“With this system, we mainly target adolescents between 10 and 15 years old. Immersion and interaction are a way of getting them interested in a subject that does not necessarily immediately attract them, explains Aurèle Cellérier. It also allows us to put them in situations where they are active and which make them responsible for the knowledge that they will acquire or not.” The experience is surprising. And will also appeal to all those for whom the world of video games and 3D remains a mystery.

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