Abstract:
The project iMARECULTURE (Advanced VR, iMmersive Serious Games and Augmented REality as Tools to Raise Awareness and Access to European Underwater CULTURal heritage) is focusing in raising European identity awareness using maritime and underwater cultural interaction and exchange in Mediterranean Sea. The aim of the project is to bring inherently unreachable underwater cultural heritage within digital reach of the wide public using virtual visits and immersive technologies. Apart from reusing existing 3D data of underwater shipwrecks and sites, with respect to ethics, rights and licensing, to provide a personalized dry visit to a museum visitor or augmented reality to the diver, it also emphasizes on developing pre- and after- encounter of the digital or physical museum visitor. This talk will present work in progress in respect to virtual and augmented reality interfaces for underwater environments. In terms of virtual reality, two different types of applications will be illustrated. The first one is a dry-visit solution for exploring ancient shipwrecks and it is focused on the general public. The second one is a serious game that aims in teaching maritime and archaeologist students the main principles of ‘site formation’, ‘surveying’ and ‘excavation’. Moreover, a novel augmented reality underwater interface will be presented which is capable of detecting square markers in poor visibility conditions as well as serving as virtual guide for divers that visit the underwater archaeological sites.