Virtual, augmented, tags, links: the digital clone of the Meryemana Church in Göreme towards its next step

Carlo GIRA
(Dipartimento di Architettura, Florence University, Italy)

Keywords: Virtual reality, Augmented reality, Rupestrian churches, Kapadokya, Interaction

Abstract:
Virtual reality based applications are today one of the best way to communicate and document architectures. This case study is about an inaccessible rupestrian church in Göreme (Cappadocia, Turkey): the Meryemana Church. This small masterpiece is afflicted by a large crack passing through the whole structure. It threatens the stability of the rock in which the church is excavated. A digital survey was operated in 2012 by the Department of Architecture, Florence University in collaboration with the Department of Cultural Heritage Sciences, Viterbo University. It was done to preserve at least a digital copy of this monument, while the collapse seems incoming. The further task was to process the 3D laser scanner data, applying the procedures of decimation and optimization, to create an interactive virtual model preserving an appropriate level of detail. Developing an application, compliant with personal devices and available on the Internet, it is possible to visit this church from any part of the world. The extended possibilities of virtual reality worlds allows us not only to reproduce the Meryemana in a full realistic way, but offers also a large number of additional information to the virtual visit. In fact our application is structured in different layers. Visitors can enter and navigate inside the model and can also interact with it. By the use of colliders, conveniently placed into the 3D model, they can enjoy their visit with the access to a series of additional information, pictures and audio/video files. In this way it is possible to enrich the exploration, creating an interesting alternative to the real one. The challenge is to provide the visitor with credible sensations: embedding historical and cultural information in a versatile version of the 3D model can be an effective and attractive solution to enhance the virtual tour and going beyond a passive walk-trough.