Mixing virtual and real scenes in the site of ancient pompeii

This paper presents an innovative 3D reconstruction of ancient frescos-paintings through the real-time revival of their fauna and flora, featuring groups of virtual animated characters with artificial life dramaturgical behaviors in an immersive, fully 1 mobile Augmented Reality environment. The main goal is to push the limits of current Augmented Reality (AR) and virtual storytelling technologies and exploring the processes of mixed narrative design of fictional spaces (e.g. frescos-paintings) where visitors can experience a high degree of realistic immersion. Based on a captured/real-time video sequence of the real scene in a video-see-through HMD setup, these scenes are enhanced by the seamless accurate real-time registration and 3D rendering of realistic complete simulations of virtual flora and fauna (virtual humans and plants) in a real-time storytelling scenario based environment. Thus the visitor of the ancient site is presented with an immersive and innovative multi-sensory interactive trip to the past

D.: Real-time virtual humans in ar sites

In this paper we present our work on the LIFEPLUS EU IST project. LIFEPLUS proposes an innovative 3D reconstruction of ancient frescos-paintings through the real-time revival of their fauna and flora, featuring groups of virtual animated characters with artificial life dramaturgical behaviors, in an immersive AR environment. The goal of this project is to push the limits of current Augmented Reality (AR) technologies, exploring the processes of narrative design of fictional spaces where users can experience a high degree of realistic interactive immersion. Based on a captured/real-time video of a real scene, the project is oriented in enhancing these scenes by allowing the possibility to render realistic 3D simulations of virtual characters in real-time. Although initially targeted at Cultural Heritage Centers and Sites, the paradigm is by no means limited to such subjects, but encompasses all types of future Location-Based Entertainments, Evisitor Attractions, e-Worker training schemes as well as on-set visualizations for the TV/movie industry. In this paper we provide an overview of the project and the technologies being employed and finally we present early results based on the ongoing research