The pandemic hit, travel stopped, and suddenly I was getting messages from many people and institutions about online tours of museums and historical sites. You can experience history without leaving your home! It’s the next best thing to being there! Well, I guess virtual reality experiences are the next best thing to being there, depending on what the “there” is one may be visiting or what the “there” you are visiting is trying to do.

Starting with the virtual tours of historic sites and history museums, I’m a fan, as a place to start. When trying to orient yourself to a particular event in a particular space, say a the WWI Battle of the Somme, a virtual experience is quite helpful. You can get an understanding of landscape and movement across the land much better than a static map with red and blue arrows. Virtual reality experiences that let you control the view is even better at trying to immerse an individual in the setting as he or she must be engaged. That engagement gets the user to think a bit more about what he or she is looking at and where he or she may “go” next. Hopefully the next stop would be to the actual site, if possible. People go to actual historic sites to experience something a bit more authentic, to put oneself in the position of being there. Virtual reality can do that to an extent, but I would think giving the user control would be key.

Tours that are more passive–click the arrow, read the caption–are a bit less engaging for me. I liken it to a less than inspired lecture with a few PowerPoint slides. And while such tours give us the opportunity to see art and artifacts we may otherwise not have access too, I find it hard to gain the same appreciation. But even with a more “realistic” virtual reality experience, I see these opportunities to be more of a starting point to prepare for the actually going to the sites and museums where one is much more in control of where one directs his or her attention and the questions one may ask.

Games offer a way to be engaged, and I am a big fan of games, but I will say a life at sea is not for me, and I would not really recommend the game from the USS Constitution museum to anyone except maybe my six-year old nephew. First it reminded me that as a youth I was never any good at arcade games. Second, I didn’t really learn anything. I could see my six-year old nephew enjoying a chance to play a computer game and make poop jokes. My middle-aged self found that less appealing. I may try an experiment with my nephew to see what his level of curiosity and engagement with such an experiment. His father also likes to play more sophisticated video games, such as Assassin’s Creed, and I know a lot of work goes into such games to give a realistic feel of the place and time. Of course, once the game commences the fantasy part becomes the main focus. So he plays the game, and I observe the setting.

For me, the VR experience is great for creating a setting. The weaknesses come in creating the greater context for better historical understanding. Balancing the visual and control experience with the actual contextual experience is the challenge. But, of course, that is the challenge for most public history projects. How do you keep your audience engaged and immersed, while also communicating complex historical ideas? It is a challenge, but a rewarding experience when they do come together.