New Perspectives in Science Education

In this paper, we propose an open metaverse platform to support immersive exhibition and education.  Metaverse is the next 3D web environment that is composed of physically enhanced virtual world and virtual enhanced reality [1]. This convergence reality offers immersive and interactive experience for exhibition and education area that requires users to participate in creation and sharing. The proposed open metaverse platform consists of a virtual space, an augmented space and a database for real and virtual objects. The virtual space is a virtual exhibition space containing exhibition items and accessed by users via virtual reality devices while the augmented space is an extended reality superimposed by virtual information. The virtual space is connected to the augmented space based on the information about real and virtual objects in the database. This open metaverse is created and shared in three steps. Initially, a user creates augmented reality map for real space and then also builds a corresponding virtual space. The user then registers objects existing in both spaces. Next the user registers digital exhibition items over the objects in virtual space. In the last step, other users are allowed to see the digital exhibition items in virtual space and augmented space via their devices. Based on the proposed open metaverse platform, users not only intuitively create their exhibition space and items but also share them with other participants via real and virtual spaces for education.