Image-based Techniques for the Creation and Display of Photorealistic Interactive Virtual Environments

In this paper we introduce an image-based 3D capture process for the creation and display of photorealistic virtual environments (VEs). The resulting VEs aim to realistically recreate existing real-world scenes that can be displayed in a range of immersive VR systems using a high-quality, view-dependent algorithm and further enhanced using advanced vegetation, shadow display algorithms and 3D sound. The scenes, an archaeological site and an urban environment, were chosen according to real-world applications in the areas of urban planning/architecture and cultural heritage education. The users in each case are able to reconstruct or manipulate elements of the VEs according to their needs, as these have been specified through a detailed user requirements survey. Furthermore, a user task analysis and scenario-based approach has been adopted for the design of the virtual prototypes and the evaluation, which is currently underway. This work is being developed in the context of the EU-funded research project CREATE and the first examples of the prototype system in use are described and demonstrated in this paper.