Extinct village 3D visualization and its evaluation with eye-movement recording

Abstract

The objective of the project was to create 3D visualization of extinct village and its evaluation using eye-tracking. As an area of interest, extinct village Čistá was selected. The village was located in Karlovy Vary Region in Czech Republic and was destroyed in 1948. The purpose of destroying the village was emerging of military training area. Second purpose was to create instructional video for military purposes "Fight in the settlement". During the creation of this video, the village was destroyed. The main content of the project was to create an interactive web application that includes 3D model of the extinct village Čistá. As underlying data, aerial photos made in 1947 and stable cadastre from 1841 were used. Buildings were made according to historical photographs and screen shots from instruction video "Fight in a settlement". Resulting 3D model and underlying data were loaded into Google Earth API and are available for the general public now. The last part was to test the model usability using eye-tracking. In total, 28 respondents participated in the experiment. The experiment contained three parts - the overall views of the village, details of the model and tasks, where users were searching for particular building. Results from testing were of statistical and graphical nature. Link to the application was placed on the web site of the project of an educational trail about extinct villages in Slavkov forest area. Created 3D model and application present the extinct village Čistá to potential visitors the educational trail. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.