Virtual Reality to Visit Historical Settings: Conimbriga's Flavian Forum
Authors
Abstract
This paper presents the development of a realistic virtual representation of Conimbriga's Flavian Forum. It was an important historical setting built during roman occupation of today's Portuguese territory.We used VRML ' Virtual Reality Modeling Language, a language that allows the development and utilization online of three dimensional virtual environments.
Generally the development of realistic VRML environments results in a set of big files that difficult its download. The complex calculations often necessary to display the virtual environment also create difficulties, since they demand too much for low end computers. To avoid these problems we used a large set of optimization techniques that resulted in a very low file size and a realistic environment that can be accessed from any current personal computer.
The paper presents the main development options, showing that with some work and care it is possible to create interesting and useful environments that can be explored educationally.