P. Melms
Virtual Reality exhibits in museums are not exactly ubiquitious today, but there do exist examples of very impressive reconstructions, mostly of buildings, in blue rooms. One of the most impressive certainly being the temple of Zeus reconstructed at the Fopundation of the Hellenic World in Athens. Besides the educational and presentational value of such systems, there exist studies which have tried to use 3D simulation techniques for analytic purposes. Mainly in the sense, that a building or a historical setting, which does not exist or does not exist in the form any more, in which it has been described in a historical document, is reconstructed virtually. Frequently such reconstructions have also been discussed as experimental settings, in which various theses about a historicla situation could be tested, by arranging lighting, movable objects and similar components, successively in such a way, that a configuration is reached which explains the surviving description best.
While conceptually attractive, these technqiues have by far not been used up to capacity, as the technical infrastructure needed is still much to expensive and for mostsuch experiments dedicated projects would be needed. (Though CAD tools, like AutoCAD, which have been used quite frequently in art history and related subjects, cuts the project costs very significnatly, when one compares them to full VR projects.)
The author has tested the possibility for another approach: Modern game engines have components which are quite effective for the creation of internal rooms. In principle, there is no reason, why these tools could not be used to create 3D simulation, specifically also in the analytic sense mentioned above, which are cheap enough to becdome a standard tool for Humanities research.
As a result a prototype of a low cost reconstruction of the painted cave of Altamira has been created, which allows to experiment with various types of lighting to understand better in which visual situation the caves have been at the time the paintings have been created.
The presentation will show the effects of the prototype and discuss the most significant experiences from ist production for the creation of similar systems.
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