Digging in a 3D Environment - Virtual Reality and Visualisation of Archaeological Data
Saudi Arabia inaugurated its King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) last week. This new campus - holding just 400 students - on the Red Sea contains some very impressive visualisation facilities at KAUST which were prototyped in Calit2's VirtuLab at UC San Diego.
Archaeologist Tom Levy - Professor at the University of California and Associate Director of Calit2’s Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3) - demonstrated how he can use CORNEA and the StarCAVE to explore a 3,000-year-old dig site in southern Jordan, complete with sound effects that imitate the actual sound of descending deep into an excavated shaft where the archaeologist found artifacts (represented in CORNEA at the precise geographic locations and depths where they were excavated). These are my two favourite videos from the 'displays and VR systems for archaeology' demonstration.
CORNEA (demonstrated in the first video on the left) might just be the most impressive of the two: it is a 10-ft. cube of screens forming a 6-sided virtual-reality environment which has the world’s highest resolution (100 million pixels) and brightest (10,000 lumens/projector) visualization environment.
It features 24 4K projectors, with native resolution of 4096x2160 pixels each (roughly four times the resolution of HD-TV). Yes, we really would not mind having one like this in the office!
Professor Levy is keen to mention this is the best way to visualise all different archaeological strata, and that visualisation of data in the CORNEA is something you just can't achieve in the field: "We're going to do something no archaeologist can do; we are going to stand in the middle of the excavation, and we are going down through hundreds of years of occupation, into the excavation, through the ancient metallurgic mount here."
He adds: "As you can see, we are dealing with thousand of pieces of archaeological data. It is very difficult to get our minds around this data in 2D. By using a 3D environment, we are looking at the data in new imaginative ways."
Other virtual reality visualisation projects that were on show at the inauguration of KAUST included a 3D model of the holy shrine at Mecca and the 3D design for the new span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge.
I'm sure you can all think of an endless amount of ways to put this Display and VR system to use! Personally, I would certainly not mind walking through Dr. Cargill's Virtual Qumran this way, travelling through Stonehenge's digital landscape using CORNEA or even trying out how our King Tut Virtual (and upcoming Stonehenge) would perform on this top notch showcase (the CORNEA or the StarCAVE system, no real preference here! ;)) of what you can definitely call high-resolution virtual reality.
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This is a beautiful example of the educational power of 3D visualization – it adds so much to the learning experience that could not be found by visiting archaeological sites. The rich graphical representation and data points convey context, time and place in a way that is difficult through any other medium. We’re looking forward to the time when this type of experience can be shared across the web, allowing students from around the globe to participate. It does also show that 3D visualization is a type of pedagogy that needs to be mastered by both teacher and student as it has unfamiliar and complex ways of engagement. We’re working with Dr Kenn Fisher and the Institute of Education in the United Kingdom, creating learning spaces that are fully interactive by using Archi-Me (www.archi-me.com). The benefit for Dr Fisher and his team is that they can take already constructed 3D models of buildings and transform them into 3D virtual learning spaces, explored by avatars that can communicate with each other and change the environments. The Archi-Me environments can be used not only as learning spaces but also to test new designs before any construction begins to identify and resolve an problems, which saves time and pressure on education budgets. Another great benefit is that the transformed 3D spaces can be accessed through a web browser, allowing groups of people to collaborate, test and learn wherever they are in the world.
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