Interacting with the virtually recreated Peranakans

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) technology opens up many new possibilities. One of the new and upcoming areas this VR technology is rapidly being used for is in the Digital Heritage domain. With the abundant content and the need for preservation and conservation for cultural heritage, there has been an explosion of Digital Heritage projects worldwide. VR technology provides an important educational tool to recreate the cultural heritage content in an immersive high-quality 3D environment for the users to enter and experience the culture in real-time. Intuitive interaction techniques providing users other tools as an alternative to the conventional mouse and keyboard input also add to enhanced educational value. Here, we present a Digital Heritage project focusing on the Singapore region. We have selected the Peranakans and their Culture as the main topic for reconstruction using the VR technology. Innovative interaction techniques specific to the selected Digital Heritage content is also under development. This paper outlines the motivation, early developments, and implementation currently in progress.

Colonia 3D Communication of Virtual 3D Reconstructions in Public Spaces

“…Another example is the 3D reconstruction of ancient fresco paintings for a revival of life in ancient Pompeii, where virtual characters are simulated in real-time using augmented reality (Papagiannakis et al, 2005). Song et al presented a reconstruction of Peranakans and their culture in the Singapore region using virtual reality (Song et al, 2003). A visualization of four-dimensional data and different time periods is exemplified by the reconstruction of the city of Koblenz (Germany) (Laycock et al, 2008).…”

Interactive View-Dependent Rendering over Networks

“…The server has to be powerful enough to support multiple clients and the clients may be low-end computers, or even handheld devices. The client cannot keep the complete original model locally due to the restriction of its resources and capability, or due to copyright reasons, which is especially the case for digitalized artworks and heritage objects such as the Digital Michelangelo project [79,74] and the virtual Peranakans [119]. The "download-and-play" pattern mostly used today is not practical for these models [122].…”