CyArk – the non-profit foundation dedicated to digitally capturing and preserving cultural heritage sites around the world – has teamed with Google's Arts and Culture project to allow people to explore remote world heritage sites in virtual reality.

Founded in 2003, the non-profit organisation uses cutting-edge technologies to create detailed 3D representations of significant cultural heritage sites before they’re damaged or destroyed by natural disasters, conflicts or the passage of time.

To create the representations that help preserve these sites for the future, CyArk uses an advanced system of laser scanners to mark millions of points that create an almost perfect 3D data set, which can then be used to create a solid 3D model.

Teaming with Google, CyArk has made its data library broadly accessible to the public, using the new Open Heritage site to distribute data on 27 important historical sites.

In the VR experiences, visitors can virtually walk down corridors, seeing examples of damage done by past incidents. Each experience is narrated, with additional videos available for the scanning conservation process. Included among the opening selections are the Bagan temples in Myanmar, the city of Ayutthaya in Thailand, and cliff-side cities in Mesa Verde.

"CyArk has accomplished some incredible things in the 15 years since it was started, capturing data on hundreds of sites on all seven continents, empowering local stakeholders with better information to make decisions about the sites they manage in order to safeguard them for future generations, and now providing access to these incredible sites to anyone, anywhere with an internet connection," said John Ristevski, CEO of CyArk.

"These recent projects start to deliver on the full promise that Ben and Barbara Kacyra envisaged when they founded CyArk 15 years ago and with the launch of our Open Heritage initiative we now get to unlock the potential of this data fully by putting it into the hands of others.

"There is an incredible power in sharing this information with a broad community and we can’t wait to see what they do with it."

For more on CyArk, Attractions Management spoke to vice president Elizabeth Lee in its Q2 2015 edition. To read online for free, click here.

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