Chandini Wijenayake Halpegamage, Norway | ISBN: | Submitted: Jul 10, 1998

Modelling virtual worlds for exhibition purposes Virtual Trondheim of the 14th century

The potential of the technologies of virtual reality is being recognised by the most different types of applicants. The possibilities offered by the technologies in letting today's humans into past, present and future worlds have barely started being exploited. Modelling ancient worlds creates a tool for scientists to enter deeper into the lives of our predecessors, thus being of help in extracting historical information. But equally interesting is the strength with which historical facts can be presented to the public. One can imagine that the technology will be intensively used for museum exhibitions. Another application that is closely related, is the use for teaching purposes from elementary school to university level.

Our approach is the interest for the technology combined with the curiosity to know more about the one thousand years of history of the town Trondheim that we are living in. During the last few decades the archaeologists have performed rather extensive excavations in the ground of Trondheim, which makes a good starting point for modelling the old town. Because of the King Olav legend Trondheim was a quite important religious centre in Europe during the late medieval. The city was at a height politically, culturally, ecclesiastically and commercially in the fourteenth century. That is the reason why we decided to model the town as it was in that period.

At present a small part of the town has been modelled. That part is one of the best-known ones from the archaeological research projects. The rest of the town is also fairly well mapped through the times. A project like this requires co-operation among the professions like archaeologists, historians and computer specialists.

A static model is interesting by itself. But if living creatures and human activities can be included in the model, the model's value will radically increase. Our aim is to include human models in the scene. Those humans will move, act and interact in natural manners governed by rules implemented by techniques based on artificial intelligence. The humans will wear cloths of the time behaving in a physically correct way. There will be domestic animals. The model will show the everyday activities, which also involves for the time rather advanced industrial activities. The life in the fields, on the river and the fjord will be included. One special feature will be the possibility to travel in time. The value for museum and educational purposes will be increased by the inclusion of modelled artefacts by the use of photogrammetry methods.

One of the important aspects of the project is the creation of systems, methods and framework that make it possible to create similar worlds with a minimum of efforts. Other worlds which we are planning to model, includes some stave churches of Norway, the transitions of the land including the immigration of people after the last glacial period and some of the extremely interesting towns, building and objects of Sri Lanka's cultural triangle.

GRAPHIC: NONE

[more information]

[other authors]
Torbjoern Hallgren

[keywords]
virtual Reality Computer Graphics World Heritage Real time animation Virtual Museum