"Metaverse" of Shanghai Natural History Museum: Creating Infinite Possibilities

In July this year, the latest Action Plan for Developing the New Track of Metaverse in Shanghai (2022-2025) released by the Shanghai Municipal Government explicitly proposed to encourage the development of the new culture and tourism with reality-virtual interaction to develop a new model for Shanghai's metaverse tourism, and to expand panoramic tourism and other brand-new models around landmark buildings and scenic spots represented by museums and art galleries.

Recently, the Exhibition and Education Center of Shanghai Natural History Museum took the lead in setting up a "construction team" composed of seven people. Relying on plane maps, tour maps, and venue photos, they spent more than 600 hours creating a "metaverse" version of the Shanghai Natural History Museum with tens of thousands of basic elements in an App called Reworld. As the saying goes, "Great oaks from little acorns grow". Every detail of this virtual work, including the overall framework of the venue, the external landscape, plants, tables, and chairs, embodies the enthusiasm and painstaking efforts of every team member.

Given that the metaverse construction is the virtualization and digitalization of the real world, it needs a wealth of material specimens from the real world and cultural elements from the spiritual world to construct a digital living space that integrates with the real social system. In the real world, it is precisely the museum that is the best place with rich material specimens and cultural elements.

From the "metaverse" version of the Shanghai Natural History Museum under construction, the audience can feel the most primitive architectural beauty. Although there are no exhibits in the museum yet, visitors can still find locations such as the permanent exhibition area, educational activity area, temporary exhibition area, four-dimensional cinema, and public service area. This cloud-based museum has highly re-presented the Shanghai Natural History Museum both in appearance and content.

Metaverse version of Shanghai Natural History Museum is a new user-oriented crossover attempt aiming at serving the public and combining edutainment with science popularization education. In the field of museum education, exhibition and service, this will undoubtedly set off a fire-new trend. In the "metaverse" version of the Shanghai Natural History Museum, users will veritably enjoy the infinite charm of science popularization exhibition, education, and activities anytime, anywhere, freely, and independently, without being limited by time and space. Moreover, they can also have their own exhibition area, collections and friends circle in this "metaverse" version of the Shanghai Natural History Museum, thus becoming a collector, curator, and science popularization fan. 

In the near future, not only will the public be able to immerse themselves in the exhibits in the "metaverse" version of the Shanghai Natural History Museum, but they can also interact and explore with tourists and virtual players in the museum, with a view to fully feeling the beauty of nature, science popularization, and technology.