KaiBiLi: gesture-based immersive virtual reality ceremony for traditional Chinese cultural activities

Gesture-based interactions in a virtual reality (VR) setting can enhance our experience of traditional practices as part of preserving and communicating heritage. Cultural experiences embodied within VR environments are suggested to be an effective approach for experiencing intangible cultural heritage. Ceremonies, rituals, and related ancestral enactments are important for preserving cultural heritage. Kāi Bǐ Lǐ, also known as the First Writing Ceremony, is traditionally held for Chinese children before their first year of elementary school. However, gesture-based immersive VR for learning this tradition is new, and have not been developed within the community. This study focused on how users experienced learning cultural practices using gesture-based interactive VR across different age groups and hardware platforms. We first conducted an experiment with 60 participants (30 young adults and 30 children) using the First Writing Ceremony as a case study in which gestural interactions were elicited, designed, implemented, and evaluated. The study showed significant differences in play time and presence between the head-mounted display VR and desktop VR. In addition, children were less likely to experience fatigue than young adults. Following this, we conducted another study after eight months to investigate the VR systems’ long-term learning effectiveness. This showed that children outperformed young adults in demonstrating greater knowledge retention. Our results and findings contribute to the design of gesture-based VR for different age groups across different platforms for experiencing, learning, and practicing cultural activities.