The Appia antica project

Since 1999 the CNR ITABC (Institute of Technologies Applied to Cultural Heritage) with its Virtual Heritage Lab (VHLab) is involved in the research of an integrated methodology to acquire, elaborate and visualize archaeological landscape, through virtual reality systems. The different techniques will be explained, together with the case studies in which they were applied: acquisition with GPS, Laser Total Station, Photomodelling and Laser Scanner. Data acquisition and post-processing integrate different technologies and methods in a coherent and organized system. In this way it is possible to increment the value of data documentation, representation and interpretation. This approach allows both the creation of complex archives and the use of these data to reconstruct archaeological context in virtual reality applications. In these VR environments, the user can interact with representations characterized by many levels of detail and can access to various levels of content and possibilities of interpretation, interacting directly with the cognitive model. The most indicated technology for a monographic representation of a structure or a monument is laser scanning that allows the digital acquisition of three dimensional objects as point clouds. The main advantage of this approach is the possibility to obtain very detailed 3D acquisitions and models characterized by high geometric resolution that is fundamental for an accurate representation and interpretation of the monument. Our methodological approach is oriented towards real time desktop OpenGL applications, in which the incremented cognitive value of scientific 3D reconstruction can be fully integrated with the complex informative system, composed by all the metadata associated. This method allows a multidisciplinary critical interpretation of the landscape in micro and macro scale.