Google and Maurithuis stepped into the project in order to incorporate famous works of the painter Johannes Vermeer into a virtual environment. With the project “Meet Vermeer”,  visitors will experience what a virtual museum is. They can physically walk in the virtual museum through the augmented reality and view 36 paintings by zooming them in. In past, Google already worked with Maurithuis on the French project ” Arts & Culture”. This is the second time that Google and Maurithuis will collaborate on the same project from Paris.

However, five developers from Google will create the virtual exhibition with paintings of Vermeer for “Arts & Culture” project, so that people all around the world can view masterpieces of the painter. The most interesting element for the creation of the virtual museum is visitor’s contribution. People can build the museum themselves. For that purpose, they can use a tour creator by Google, Poly Tours. The tour creator allows using formats ar and vr. To view paintings, visitors should have ARCore (Android) or ARKit (iOS) platforms downloaded on their phones. They can also use normal vr mode on phones.

Furthermore, Google developed the Art Camera two years ago. This robot camera is used for providing people with a virtual view of the paintings of Vermeer. More than that, the camera scan and take a photo of a painting on a distance in 1 meter and uses laser and sonar for a good focus. Therefore, it is possible to zoom in the paintings to view them better. However, paintings can be zoomed only outside of the ar platform.

The “Meet Vermeer” project is a brilliant idea to view and enjoy masterpieces of the great painter Johannes Vermeer!