Considerations for Successful Design and Development of Virtual Reality Tourism in the 21st Century

This research aims to provide lessons learned in designing experiences for virtual reality tourism and historical site recreation. It offers insight into the iterative practice of design, implementation and collaboration that shaped the creation of a unique virtual tourism project designed to support Egyptian virtual tourism at historic sites. The work is novel in its evolution, beginning as an independent project by an Egyptian researcher-artist in Egypt and was reshaped through a year of collaboration with United States based virtual reality, architecture, interactive media and other researchers though the international Fulbright Scholars fellowship. The paper provides reflections, observations and considerations for similar researchers aiming to conduct new virtual tourism projects using virtual reality. This brief work serves as a survey review of common considerations for such work, best practices in collaboration and design process and lessons learned for more effective virtual reality production. This research is provided as a source for the beginner in virtual reality, offering findings useful for people entirely new to such projects and seeking guidance on considerations for undergoing such a project. It also explains virtual reality-based virtual tourism contextualizing it between game design and simulation, providing observed best practices for the practicalities of implementation that are distinct to such projects. The format of this work is not designed to frame traditional research, but instead to provide a heuristic-informed set of lessons learned and considerations for new virtual tourism virtual reality projects.