Virtual Scene Construction of Large-Scale Cultural Heritage : A Framework Initiated from the Case Study of the Grand Canal of China

Abstract

Virtual reality technology has been applied to the protection of cultural heritage for about 20 years. However, methods or systems of cultural heritage reported in previous studies are still unable to represent large-scale cultural heritage sites such as the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, the Struve Geodetic Arc and the boundaries of the Roman Empire. We aimed at constructing a large-scale cultural-heritage 3-D model with the focus on better management and organization of the scene. Starting from the case study of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, we first explore various remote sensing data suitable for large-scale cultural heritage modeling, and then adopt a 3-D geographic global information system for large-scale 3-D scene organization and management. The entire 3-D virtual scene reconstruction process can be divided into four steps. The first one is the remote-sensing data preparation, where TM, SPOT5 and other remote sensing data were selected according to the characteristics of the cultural heritage of the Grand Canal and further subjected to data filtering and geometric correction. In the second step, the 3-D terrain modeling was carried out based on 3-D earth model segmentation and tile hierarchy system, where we fused and split remote sensing image and sampling spatial information for 3-D terrain model. The third step involves the modeling of local heritage with sophisticated modeling techniques sufficient to build a heritage 3-D model and to integrate terrain model with local scene through aerial orthophotos. Finally, in the fourth step the virtual scene integration is performed in a 3-D spherical system, where we designed a tree nodes system to assembly and manage multi-level and multi-type models of the Grand Canal. After these four steps are completed, the large-scale cultural heritage scene in 3-D spherical information system can be achieved. Here, we address main challenges in virtual scene reconstruction of large-scale cultural heritage. This study can be valuable for regional and national cultural heritage protection as well as for Chinese government as a reference to infrastructural research, and finally for stimulation of other large-scale cultural heritage research around the world both in 3-D modeling and virtual scene organization.