Virtualized Architectural Heritage: New Tools and Techniques

echnology has come a long way in solving many of the early limitations of virtual reality (VR) and virtual worlds have quietly found growing acceptance in selected areas, from research and industrial training to entertainment and medicine. Less than a decade ago, however, issues of graphic quality and speed dogged virtual world heritage developers, forcing simplistic representations and triggering criticism from the heritage community. In addition, until recently there was also a lack of inexpensive software and data standards (such as QuickTimeVR and Virtual Reality Modeling Language, or VRML) for creating visually realistic interactive environments. Although significant advances have been made, the accurate virtual rep-resentation of historic and cultural landmarks has been limited by a lack of tools to quickly, inex-pensively, and accurately model reality. The representation of built heritage requires two distinct forms of 3D data—current, real-world con-ditions and virtual or theorized historical interpre-tations. We call the combination of the two forms virtualized as opposed to virtual. Despite the use of numerous measurement technologies in tradition-al heritage work, existing tools lacked the optimal mix of features required for virtualized architectur-al environments. Dissatisfied with available choic