Virtual reality environments are ever more going online. This trend, opened by videogames, will open new important opportunities to enhance cultural tourism, given the possibility of creating compelling virtual adventures set in the context of artistic and natural beauties. The authors are exploring these challenges in the context of the Travel in Europe (TiE) project, and developing tools to build enriched virtual environments where the player could explore faithfully reconstructed places and live there information-rich, contextualized experiences. The TiE architecture is based on a state-of-the-art commercial game engine, with massive multiplayer online games (MMOG) facilities that support access to multiple concurrent users, plus ad-hoc designed modules. The 3D model is completely geo-referenced. In each covered area, a few points-of-interest (POIs) are implemented. These buildings are rigorously reconstructed at a high level of detail. The textures for the rest of the palaces are built dynamically by the TiE system using a statistical template-based algorithm that exploits local characterizations of common architectonic elements. The TiE virtual world is enriched by geo-localized, contextualized MicroGames (mGs). mGs are simple, short games that focus the player’s attention on a particular item that is found during exploration of the 3D world. mGs are typically taken from well known simple game models, such as Puzzle, MemoryGame, and FindTheWrongDetails. The main concept that underpins mGs is that, they should be intuitive and easy to play, so that the player can focus on the contents rather than on learning how to play. Preliminary informal tests have suggested that the approach is valid and that the enriched 3D environment supports the contextualized promotion of artifacts, products and services, which is an important growing demand from institutions and enterprises that want to valorize the resources of a territory.
MovieRemix: Having Fun Playing with Videos
