VIRTUAL MUSEUMS – The FUTURE of HISTORICAL MONUMENTS DOCUMENTATION and VISUALIZATION

Abstract

Technology development now allows us to display the virtual reality (VR) world in a relatively high quality. VR is beginning to be used in many fields and getting many uses. This technology will be used more and more in the future and photogrammetry will not be an exception. For a long time, it has not been possible to present models in any other interesting form than in simple 3D model viewers or directly in the software where this model was built. In our case, this technology was used to create a beta version of a virtual museum that includes, in the beginning, some historical objects documented last year with appropriate technology which allows the transfer of models directly to the VR world. All the models that were presented in the museum had been created from aerial or ground photos, and some of them had been created by a combination of both technologies or in combination with laser scanned data. If we want to use 3D models from photogrammetry, which gets us a realistic copy of a documented object, it is necessary to optimize the photogrammetrical technology for the VR use. The paper introduces all steps of the workflow of how we can obtain a model which could be applicate in VR.