Thanks to their playful and educational approach Virtual Museum systems are very effective for the communication of Cultural Heritage. Among the latest technologies Immersive Virtual Reality is probably the most appealing and potentially effective to serve this purpose; nevertheless, due to a poor user-system interaction, caused by an incomplete maturity of a specific technology for museum applications, it is still quite uncommon to find immersive installations in museums.<br> This paper explore the possibilities offered by this technology and presents a workflow that, starting from digital documentation, makes possible an interaction with archaeological finds or any other cultural heritage inside different kinds of immersive virtual reality spaces.<br> Two different cases studies are presented: the National Archaeological Museum of Marche in Ancona and the 3D reconstruction of the Roman Forum of Fanum Fortunae. Two different approaches not only conceptually but also in contents; while the Archaeological Museum is represented in the application simply using spherical panoramas to give the perception of the third dimension, the Roman Forum is a 3D model that allows visitors to move in the virtual space as in the real one.<br> In both cases, the acquisition phase of the artefacts is central; artefacts are digitized with the photogrammetric technique Structure for Motion then they are integrated inside the immersive virtual space using a PC with a HTC Vive system that allows the user to interact with the 3D models turning the manipulation of objects into a fun and exciting experience.<br> The challenge, taking advantage of the latest opportunities made available by photogrammetry and ICT, is to enrich visitors’ experience in Real Museum making possible the interaction with perishable, damaged or lost objects and the public access to inaccessible or no longer existing places promoting in this way the preservation of fragile sites.

ABSTRACT:Today the ICTs are favourable additions to museum exhibitions. This work aims to realize an innovative system of digital exploitation of artefacts in the National Archaeological Museum of Marche (MANaM), in order to create a shared museum that will improve the knowledge of cultural contents through the paradigm "learning by interacting" and "edutainment".The main novelty is the implementation of stand-alone multimedia installations for digital artefacts that combine real and virtual scenarios in order to enrich the experience, the knowledge and the multi-sensory perception.A Digital Library (DL) is created using Close Range Photogrammetry (CRP) techniques applied to 21 archaeological artefacts belonging to different categories. Enriched with other data (texts, images, multimedia), all 3D models flow into the cloud data server from which are recalled in the individual exhibitions. In particular, we have chosen three types of technological solutions: VISUAL, TACTILE, SPATIAL. All the solutions take into account the possibility of group interaction, allowing the participation of the interaction to an appropriate number of users. Sharing the experience enables greater involvement, generating communicative effectiveness much higher than it would get from a lonely visit. From the "Museum Visitors Behaviour Analysis" we obtain a survey about users' needs and efficiency of the interactive solutions.The main result of this work is the educational impact in terms of increase in visitors, specially students, learning increase of historical and cultural content, greater user involvement during the visit to the museum.

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ABSTRACT:Digital documentation and high-quality 3D representation are always more requested in many disciplines and areas due to the large amount of technologies and data available for fast, detailed and quick documentation. This work aims to investigate the area of medium and small sized artefacts and presents a fast and low cost acquisition system that guarantees the creation of 3D models with an high level of detail, making the digitalization of cultural heritage a simply and fast procedure. The 3D models of the artefacts are created with the photogrammetric technique Structure From Motion that makes it possible to obtain, in addition to three-dimensional models, high-definition images for a deepened study and understanding of the artefacts. For the survey of small objects (only few centimetres) it is used a macro lens and the focus stacking, a photographic technique that consists in capturing a stack of images at different focus planes for each camera pose so that is possible to obtain a final image with a higher depth of field. The acquisition with focus stacking technique has been finally validated with an acquisition with laser triangulation scanner Minolta that demonstrates the validity compatible with the allowable error in relation to the expected precision.