Interactive distributed guided tours of historical sites

In this paper we propose a new metaphor of information retrieving, usable in heritage management and publishing. Based on the net, the user is able to participate in virtual guided tours, sessions of conferences-like. A human expert will be the guide for all the connected users. He will use different media (sound/video) to communicate; the members of the guided group will communicate through chat sessions. Each virtual tourist will be autonomous in its 3D world movements but he will receive audio/video information or other multimedia documents or 3D objects, eventually autonomous entities placed in its 3D virtual universe, from its guide. The guide is able to suggest to its group of tourists some interesting viewpoints during the tour. More, he is able to augment the database, particularly the associated behaviours to the entities. It is enough to analyse the entities in a scene and to attach them some new behaviours. For example, he can place in the environment some virtual guides, and the users will interact with them. These virtual guides recognise some keywords or intentions; i.e. if a tourist spends some time near a specific place, the virtual guide will initiate a dialog upon the place's history. The user is able to cancel the dialog with a virtual guide and return to its group. The application is based on the AReViJava (Atelier de Realite Virtuelle) platform, developed in our laboratory.