Virtual Reality Is Bringing These Lost Worlds Back to Life – NBCNews.com

A virtual reconstruction of a dwelling at Skara Brae, a pre-historic Scottish village. Soluis/Heritage

Seeing opportunities to educate and attract new visitors, museums are getting in on the VR game, too. The British Museum in London, for instance, partnered with

Another VR exhibit in Beijing's Forbidden City takes visitors through reconstructions of the porcelain factories during the Ming and Qing dynasties. To transport visitors into a more recent past, the Royal Canadian Regiment Museum in Ottawa partnered with VR company SimWave to make a rumbling rig that recreates being down in the trenches at the Vimy Ridge battle during World War I.

Some see the most promise in experiences that go beyond the visuals.

"For my money, the most useful stuff is not the VR, at least not yet, but the augmented reality," says Shawn Graham, a digital archaeologist at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Augmented reality (AR) and other forms of mixed reality use VR elements overlaid on the real world think Pokmon Go and Google Glass.

"If you have an AR headset and you're out in the field, you can see what's going on around you but then have an overlay," Eve says of elements sights, sounds, and smells. "It adds so much more to that experience."

Simulations that can fool your other senses like 3-D audio to trick your ears or gloves to mimic touch make for a more effective immersive experience, as sight is just one way we perceive reality.

Eve, however, notes that AR technology isn't quite ready to be a massive hit. He's waiting to see what companies like the Florida-based AR outfit Magic Leap come up with in the next few years.

But whatever form the VR and AR experience takes, the story is key.

"I think we make a mistake if we imagine that augmented realities or virtual realities are something brand new in the world," Graham says.

He recalled being a graduate student in the U.K. and taking a field trip to Avebury, a cousin of Stonehenge, with one of his professors. "He was standing there in the middle of this stone circle, and he was telling us this story of coming into this sacred space and he was pointing to the horizon, drawing our attention to different burial mounds, and he was enabling us to see the past in a way we couldn't see before coming in fresh as students."

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Virtual Reality Is Bringing These Lost Worlds Back to Life - NBCNews.com