
Show HN: A map of the world's virtual museums - mektrik
https://virtualmuseums.io/
======
wenc
Thank you for creating this.

As a museum lover (I've visited ~ 170 around the world), I struggle with
getting into virtual tours. I wonder if anyone else feels that virtual museum
tours are so far from ideal that it isn't worthwhile investing the time to
browse? I can't seem to get into them -- not because of trivial reasons like
"oh it's not like the real thing", but more like no one's been able to produce
the right UI for enjoying a museum. Even Google's Art and Culture indoor maps
of museums is only good for 5 minutes of amusement and not worth bothering
with again. I clicked on several links in the comments and was like, eh --
doesn't really hold my interest (though if I were physically at the museum I'd
be spending hours).

I wonder if these are factors:

1) Lack of good photography. Most museums tend to be dark, so you need
professional photographers who know how to work with low-light photography.
Also most pictures/videos tend to be low res for some reason, which takes away
from the enjoyment. I wonder if most museums are loath to make high-res
photography available for free because it cannibalizes their admissions.

Google Arts and Culture has some high-res artwork, but the selection is
extremely limited.

2) Unwieldy ways to move in space. Google indoor maps, which has a FPS (first
person shooter) interface, isn't the most natural to navigate, because it
doesn't match how people actually experience a museum. I wonder if instead of
an FPS perspective, an adventure-game orthographic view might make more sense?
It would let you walk around the museum and click on objects to interact with
them. Also let's face it -- professional museum goers will tell you that they
are extremely selective and don't interact with all exhibits, so a
frictionless way to preview and skip exhibits is key.

3) Limited/non-comprehensive collection. Usually only the less interesting
collections are online. (not always true, but generally true). This is likely
due to the cost of putting entire collections online, and there not being a
lot of payoff -- unless it was possible to create a UI good enough to support
monetization.

4) Lack of a cohesive story. Because only select pieces are on display online,
the experience is disjointed, vs browsing a physical section of the museum
which groups like objects together. The best museum story I've ever come
across was the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which told a chronological story.

Does anyone know of any museum virtual tours that don't suffer from these
issues?

~~~
tmilard
1) Not sure. I would say photos are usually quite ok.

2) Yes I agree: Those 360° photos are ok but the transition from one to the
next is poor, even for google indoor-map as surprising as it sounds.

The only good 360° photo technology is by far matterport.
[https://matterport.com](https://matterport.com)

3) I would think it is ofen marketing. To market their museum. Photos, 100
years ago did not kill the "presence" in museums.

Same for virtual visits... Nothing to worry about.

4) Yes, I also think an audio comment would add a lot. I wonder why no 360°
visit does this...

Thierry [https://free-visit.net](https://free-visit.net)

~~~
wenc
Thanks for your thoughts.

1) It depends on the site. It seems many are still quite low-res, not even as
good as pictures taken on Instagram.

2) I wonder if 360° is the right approach. We typically don't need to
experience the transition from exhibit to exhibit. We only need 360° around
the exhibit. An adventure-game sprite may be good enough to move around the
space and click on objects as needed.

3) Unless the virtual visits were actually good -- then part of the ticket
sales might be affected. So the solution is to sell tickets for virtual tours
(but they have to be really good)

4) Audio would be nice, just like the headset you can rent at many museums.
What I meant though was more the grouping and sequence of the exhibits -- for
instance when you walk through a special exhibit, the sequence tells the
story. In virtual tours, because the collection is incompletely digitized, the
story is broken.

------
mektrik
Hey folks, I’m the creator of virtualmuseums.io

I built it after seeing a bunch of articles listing virtual museums around the
world. I felt like part of the point of touring these virtual museums was to
capture just a tiny bit of the fun of travelling, but that this is lost when
you just scroll through articles.

I thought that it’d be more fun to put all the museums on a map, and let you
track your progress as you visit them, as this helps to recreate a tiny part
of what’s fun about travelling.

Would love to hear your thoughts/suggestions :)

~~~
samizdis
British Museum online collections:

[https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_onlin...](https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx)

BM prints and drawings virtual gallery:

[https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/galleries/prints-
an...](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/galleries/prints-and-drawings-
virtual-gallery)

~~~
mektrik
Thanks!

------
donarb
Note also that Google has an Arts and Culture site that has links to virtual
museums around the world. They have lots of interesting content.

[https://artsandculture.google.com](https://artsandculture.google.com)

~~~
crehn
I wish the whole experience wasn’t so laggy (on 2020 iPad Pro).

------
tmilard
Honestly, calling all those (pretty good) visits "virtual visits" is a bit
like calling a beer a strong drink.

Now I think this is more of a strong drink : [https://free-
visit.net/index.php/fr/demos](https://free-visit.net/index.php/fr/demos)

------
nicthesailor
Just playing with it now, and I love the idea.

Have you thought about adding the zoos and aquariums that are live-streaming
their animals?

~~~
mektrik
Thanks!

Yeah I've definitely been tempted with adding more ideas like these. The one
question I've struggled with, and would be super keen for your thoughts on, is
whether it'd look okay to have them on the virtualmuseums.io domain, or
whether you think it's worth starting again and trying to capture all the best
'virtual attractions' on a single map?

~~~
nicthesailor
That's a really good question: where to stop.

Would it be possible to filter them by type? Put them all on the site, tag
them, and let people choose to display particular tags or categories.

~~~
mektrik
100% possible! There's still the question of whether you'd put them on the
existing site, or make a new (more general) site to host all the links on.
Definitely keen for thoughts as I'm torn between the two

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
There are Unix programs where a single executable answers to different names,
and behaves accordingly (e.g. busybox works as ls or cat or ..., I think).

You could have a single site, with different names, where the filter is preset
by the URL used.

