Abstract
As virtual reality (VR) and the corresponding 3D documentation and modelling technologies evolve into increasingly powerful and established tools for numerous applications in architecture, monument preservation, conservation/restoration and the presentation of cultural heritage, new methods for creating information-rich interactive 3D environments are increasingly in demand. In this article, we describe the development of an immersive virtual reality application for the Imperial Cathedral in Königslutter, in which 360° panoramic photographs were integrated within the virtual environment as a novel and complementary form of visualization. The Imperial Cathedral (Kaiserdom) of Königslutter is one of the most important examples of Romanesque architecture north of the Alps. The Cathedral had previously been subjected to laser-scanning and recording with 360° panoramic photography by the Photogrammetry & Laser Scanning lab of HafenCity University Hamburg in 2010. With the recent rapid development of consumer VR technology, it was subsequently decided to investigate how these two data sources could be combined within an immersive VR application for tourism and for architectural heritage preservation. A specialised technical workflow was developed to build the virtual environment in Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) and integrate the panorama photographs so as to ensure the seamless integration of these two datasets. A simple mechanic was developed using the native UE4 node-based programming language to switch between these two modes of visualisation.
Highlights
Virtual reality has recently become a much broader field, finding applications in medicine, architecture, military training, and cultural heritage, among other fields
A specialised technical workflow was developed to build the virtual environment in Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) and integrate the panorama photographs so as to ensure the seamless integration of these two datasets
There are currently no effective ways of bringing together these two kinds of data into a single virtual reality (VR) application. This is important for applications in cultural heritage, where documentation often takes the form of multiple different kinds of complementary data
Summary
Virtual reality has recently become a much broader field, finding applications in medicine, architecture, military training, and cultural heritage, among other fields. With this growth has come some discrepancy in the definition of the medium: while in some fields VR is used to refer to 360◦. Immersive panoramas and videos, in other fields it refers to fully-realised interactive CGI environments These two “kinds” of VR have traditionally been approached very differently, owing to highly diverging workflows and the different data sources required. Sci. 2020, 10, 1517 actions partially determine what happens in the environment” [1] This very broad definition allows for most modern applications of VR to be taken into account. This implementation has the advantage of exploiting the potential for the interactivity of a real-time game engine environment with the high-fidelity of high dynamic range image (HDRI) panoramic photography
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