In some museums and galleries, to present exhibits, a virtual museum is constructed using a guide system or a computer system to present exhibits in a virtual space, to thereby aid in viewing actual exhibits.
As such a system, there is a virtual museum system (Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-145657) that can effectively enhance values of tourism resources of a place by presenting a virtual world superimposed on the real world to visitors, thereby enabling the visitors of that place to access it and to see a scene of that place in a past time.
This virtual museum system presents a virtual space generated by a museum program that controls an object output system having an object output terminal that outputs an object represented by information including at least an object position and output information based on that output information, position measuring means for obtaining the terminal position of said object output terminal and output means for outputting, when said terminal position and said object position is in a predetermined relationship, said object through said object output terminal. The virtual museum system has virtual space management means that defines correspondence between a virtual space in which said object is disposed and an actual space in which said virtual museum is actually developed. The virtual museum system can determine position information in such a way as to display an object of the virtual museum existing in the virtual space at a position in the corresponding actual space.
There has also been disclosed (Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 9-62651) an electronic museum service apparatus that frees the user from efforts of selecting each content of a museum for display by himself/herself and selects and displays a series of museum contents that are suitable for an aim of learning automatically without user's own selection of museum contents in the museum in order to efficiently select and display a series of contents suitable for the aim of learning such as “to understand haniwas (clay figures) in the Japanese Kofun period (tumulus period)”.
This electronic museum service apparatus supplies computerized multimedia information including graphics, sound and text and includes museum content storing means for storing museum content information in the form of said multimedia information as educational material elements, museum using educational material storing means for storing educational materials each composed of a combination of said educational material elements and museum using educational material search means for searching said educational materials for a desired educational material. The museum using educational material storing means includes learning aim storing means for storing an aim of learning that utilizes said museum content information, educational material element storing means for storing said educational material elements in association with said aim of learning, learner's understanding state storing means for storing information on achievement in learning represented by assessment data for said aim of learning and teaching strategy function means for determining the educational material element to be presented next.
An exhibition in a museum or a gallery as described above is a kind of presentation, and it is necessary to enhance effects of the exhibition.
From this view point, it is possible in the systems disclosed in the above mentioned patent documents 1 and 2 to enhance presentation effects by enhancing exhibition effects through superimposition of a virtual space on exhibits or by automatically supplying data associated with the aim of learning. However, such presentation of an exhibition content is performed by a computer in accordance merely with a specific procedure, and therefore a viewer can foresee the content of the presented data to some extent. Accordingly, from the viewpoint of presentation effects of that exhibit, the viewer has some understanding associated with the foresight, and no surprise exceeding it will occur.
The present invention has been made in view of the above described situations, and has as an object to provide a presentation system that can effectively present exhibits as exhibition contents to viewers.