Mixing virtual and real scenes in the site of ancient pompeii

Abstract

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