With the developing technology, many historical buildings and artifacts that are included in the definition of cultural heritage are presented to the use of people with different display methods in digital environment. Digital museums and virtual tours obtained with images are among the most common examples. Virtual tour allows watching all kinds of indoor and outdoor spaces on the internet via computer. In the meantime, the user can make a three-dimensional trip up, down and right to the inside of the stage with the help of the mouse or keyboard. This application that revolutionized the IT sector is called Virtual Tour. As of 2020, the COVID-19 virus has significantly affected daily life in our country and in the world. It is observed that curfews and travel restrictions applied within the scope of quarantine for the purpose of prevention increase people's interest in virtual tour and similar applications. Virtual tours allow you to visit historical buildings and areas with devices such as smartphones, tablets and computers without the need for travel. However, when virtual tour applications known as 360 virtual tour are examined, it is seen that it is lacking mechanically although it seems visually sufficient. Virtual tour works produced from wide angle photographs provide an optical illusion and can only be viewed from certain angles Accordingly, 360 virtual tours are weak in terms of interaction and user experience. The display methods that can be developed are not limited to only 360 virtual tours. According to the type of cultural heritage, many different applications will be developed using visual design tools and various coding languages. Physics engines developed for video game and applications have the physics and simulation parameters needed in games and applications. It is possible to develop a detailed application with the features provided by physics engines. In this way, a highly interactive application can be developed, and the application can be used in many platforms. With a virtual tour work to be done using a video game engine, the historical buildings that have been severely destroyed and dangerous for visitors can be modeled in digital environment and used as virtual tour. In this way, historical structures that have disappeared can continue to maintain their visual memory in digital environment. In this research, it is aimed to make a high interactive virtual tour study of a historical building that has been destroyed to be visited by making use of the advanced simulation features of video game engines and to reveal the advantages and disadvantages of video game engines in the virtual tour development stage in line with the information obtained.


Keywords: Virtual tour, cultural heritage, 360 tour, historical structure, video game