Maria Sifniotis

ARCOLite-an XML based system for building and presenting virtual museum exhibitions using Web3D and augmented reality

This paper describes ARCOLite, our low cost XML based client-server architecture for building and presenting digital heritage content in virtual museums. Our system includes components for creation and refinement of virtual artefacts including virtual reconstruction of buildings; XML content management, XML technologies for content repositories and presentation; and content visualisation using Web3D, virtual and augmented reality

Visualising uncertainty in archaeological reconstructions: a possibilistic approach

For the past decade, 3D archaeological visualisations have mostly been representing photo-realistic reconstructions of ancient monuments. While these can be constructive in a museum or tourist context, the archaeological community has long stressed the need for reconstructions showing where the actual remains end and the assumptions begin. Recent attempts to implement the latter approach are either limited to found/not found scenarios or marking of uncertain areas without any justification to the choice of colour/hue degradation etc. As a result, there is no system to represent the uncertainty involved in visualising archaeological data. The archaeologist interprets a site based on a limited amount of material remains and uses comparative evidence from other sites, written references, as well as speculation in order to create a reconstruction. Due to this varied range of data, he/she may have different levels of certainty on some areas of the reconstruction than others. If we are able to observe this uncertainty on the visualisation itself, it would provide us with a whole new range of uses for archaeological models, such as learning about archaeological hypotheses, comparing uncertainties across different models and highlighting cases where further research may be required.

3D visualization of archaeological uncertainty

By uncertainty, we define an archaeological experts level of confidence in an interpretation deriving from gathered evidence. Archaeologists and computer scientists have urged caution in the use of 3D for archaeological reconstructions because the availability of other possible hypotheses is not always being acknowledged. This poster presents a 3D visualization system of archaeological uncertainty.