Interactive and Immersive Digital Representation for Virtual Museum: VR and AR for Semantic Enrichment of Museo Nazionale Romano, Antiquarium di Lucrezia Romana and Antiquarium di Villa Dei Quintili

Abstract

The research focuses on the generation of 3D models aimed at creating interactive virtual environments as the outcomes of scalar representations of existing realities. The purpose is to increase the narration, fruition, and dissemination of the findings that emerged from the archaeological investigations carried out in a large sector of the south-eastern suburbs of Rome. In this context, the research proposes a process oriented toward designing a virtual museum of the first group of works from the Appia Antica Archaeological Park and now exhibited at the Museo Nazionale Romano, the Antiquarium di Lucrezia Romana, and the Antiquarium di Villa Dei Quintili. Managing high historical and cultural findings through geometrical surveys, high-resolution data from 3D survey analysis, archival research, and interactive digital representation is the aim of the study. The digitisation of artefacts has made it possible to build new forms of communication that enrich virtual and on-site visits with content, both of the park and of the Museums that host the collections. In particular, it has gradually allowed a ‘virtual’ relocation of works from the Appia Park, favouring the definition of a method capable of communicating new content and laying the basis for the development of a virtual museum, a temporary exhibition, and a web platform for one of the most important historical sites of ancient Rome.

Keywords

• virtual reality
• augmented reality
• virtual museums
• digital proxemics
• 3D sculpture
• interactive digital representation