3D Murale _ Archaeology and Virtual Reality

About the Project
3D Murale is an EU funded research project in cooperation with archaeologists and an international team of multimedia content creators. Within the project 3D?multimedia tools are used and developed to measure, reconstruct and visualize archaeological ruins in virtual reality.
Archaeological Field Work
A main problem facing archaeologists is the presentation of the information to colleagues and public. When conducting an excavation it is not immediately clear what finds are going to prove being more relevant for answering specific questions than others. Archaeologists are thus forced to treat every scrap of information as equally important, resulting in a large mass of data. The task of archaeology is to sieve the information and to extract the history of events. Once the latter is known one has to find ways to make the results accessible to a wider audience.
Classical ways of presenting archaeological research results are hampered to a large extent by the condensation of often three-dimensional information in two-dimensional space. A better way is to try to preserve the three-dimensionality of the finds. Here is where we face an additional difficulty: the element of time. It is impossible in most cases to restore the physical reality of a specific site like the upper agora zone at Sagalassos to reflect all the changes that took place during its long history. This can only be done using some form of virtual reality presentation. Therefore the 3D Murale project was set up to find new ways and tools allowing the archaeologists themselves to present this three dimensional history.
Site Visualisation and User Interaction
An important part of the project is the visualisation of the site, where the user can navigate through a textured model of the virtually reconstructed ancient city and visit some of the main buildings such as the NW-Heroon and the Nympheum on the Upper Agora.
The application allows several types of navigation methods, ranging from an almost unrestricted navigation in 3D space to a guided tour where the visitor can look around at interesting places. It is of special importance that navigation is easy and intuitive to use.
To support intuitivity a novel device will be developed specially targeted for museum visitors. This is a hemispherical 3D display mounted on a flexible joint, which allows the user to change his viewpoint by simply turning the screen.
Within the system the user can obtain more information about certain objects. This is more than just displaying text - e.g. real images taken at the actual site can be compared with the virtual reconstruction, or recorded 3D-artefacts can be viewed in detail.