Shaping the Future of 3D Heritage: Main Achievements of XRculture after 18 Months

Following 18 months of intensive collaboration, the XRculture consortium wraps up its initiative aimed at shaping the future of 3D cultural heritage. Between February 1 and July 31, 2026, the project united 10 partner organizations across 7 European countries to drive innovation in digitisation, standardisation, aggregation and reuse of 3D cultural heritage within the Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage. 

Solutions 1: Transforming Cultural Preservation Through AI

The initiative exceeded its performance targets by publishing 1,281 3D models. The project operated across two main areas:

• Creating 603 brand-new, AI-assisted digitizations;
• Reprocessing and improving  678 existing 3D datasets.

A significant technical breakthrough was the application of advanced AI technologies, such as Gaussian Splatting and Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF), to digitise complex (‘non-collaborative’) surfaces, such as transparent Roman glassware. 

Solutions 2: Seamless interoperability

To address data fragmentation, the consortium released the open-source XRculture Middleware Protocol v1.0.3. This format-agnostic protocol enables compatible repositories and 3D web viewers to exchange information seamlessly. The project also streamlined metadata workflows via the Share3D Dashboard 2.0 to support the new Europeana Data Model (EDM) extension for 3D, and helped cultural heritage organisations upload new 3D models during the Twin it! II campaign. 

Read more about the technical solutions on the XRculture website. 

Real-World Impact and Reach

The XRculture ecosystem was validated through four pilot scenarios reaching over 80,000 citizens:

• Heritage at Risk: field-tested an offline-first mobile augmented reality (AR) capture application designed specifically for hazardous, low-connectivity conflict zones and trained 30 museum staff in Ukraine to document endangered collections. Published and aggregated 34 newly generated 3D models directly into the Registry of the Museum Fund of Ukraine (RMFU) and the common European data space via Europeana.
• Heritage Tourism: established an automated, low-cost digital pipeline to support European heritage tourism organizations. Testing was successfully completed across five European destinations (Slovenia, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece and Italy) with more than 2,000 direct in-person visitors of all age demographics engaged. A highly replicable, low-cost XR business model for sustainable heritage tourism was successfully validated.
• Dispersed Heritage: Virtually reunited a fragmented historical glass collection in Mixed Reality at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale delle Marche. Centred on a collection of 23 ancient Roman glass artefacts, visitors could interact with the reunited artefacts and learn their story in a shared virtual environment while remaining in the physical museum space. 
• Immersive Education: In order to evaluate the true pedagogical value and cognitive impact of 3D data space assets in schools, the Università Politecnica delle Marche (UNIVPM) designed a controlled comparative study. Engaged 85 secondary school students, achieved an outstanding average satisfaction score of 4.6 out of 5 on the usability and acceptability scale, and recorded a 21.52% improvement in learning outcomes.
  

Legacy and Capacity Building

Although the formal project period has ended, the technical infrastructure, documentation, and training materials developed during XRculture are intended to remain available for further use and development. The code can be accessed on our Github repository while the datasets, presentations and publications can be downloaded from our Zenodo community.

As part of the project, 13 capacity-building workshops and webinars were organised in different European locations, including Warsaw, Siena, Brussels, Kyiv, and Ferrara. These activities reached more than 390 cultural heritage professionals.

The project also produced 12 open-licensed training toolkits covering topics such as metadata workflows, AI-supported digitisation, and middleware deployment. These materials have been transferred to the 3D-4CH Online Competence Centre, where they can be incorporated into future training activities.

More details on the website of XRculture.

Pixelated Realities PO is a consortium partner in the XRCulture project co-financed by the European Commission under the Digital Europe Programme. The project’s beneficiary in Ukraine is the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine.