An AI-Enhanced VR Metaverse for Ethnic Festival Culture Protection and Inheritance

In the context of globalization and digitalization, ethnic festival cultures face significant challenges in authentic inheritance and dissemination. Traditional 2D videos and live streaming often suffer from poor user interactivity and inconsistent content authenticity, with many cultural representations lacking genuine ethnic characteristics. To overcome these limitations, we developed a virtual reality (VR) metaverse centered on ethnic festivals, employing key technologies: 1) using the professional YNU-Dance motion capture dataset and skeletal animation retargeting to faithfully reproduce 11 ethnic dances with high fidelity; 2) using a multi-camera array scanning system to create personalized 3D digital avatars that enhance user immersion; 3) enabling real-time motion driving of avatars synchronized with users’ actual movements through the monocular pose estimation model, without wearable devices, improving interaction naturalness and embodiment. The system is integrated in Unreal Engine 5, delivering visually compelling experiences with consistent cultural elements. Our results demonstrate the potential of VR technology to support authentic ethnic cultural preservation and interactive participation.