Towards a 3D Visualization Interface for Cultural Landscapes and Heritage Information

The creation of realistic virtual environments of (almost) completely disappeared historical landscapes is a problematic matter. This is due to three reasons: data imperfection in historical sources, lack of well-suited automatic solutions supporting the creation of such virtual environments, and a poor definition of appropriate visualization, i.e. of what users perceive as realistic. We started from the premise that landscape painters and cartographers were able to capture the essential landscape characteristics without creating a very realistic representation. Proceeding in a similar way, we explore the potentials of non-photorealistic (NPR) representations for a 3D visualization interface. In this paper we explain the three problems that strongly impede the creation of realistic 3D virtual landscape reconstructions, and argue why we expect that these NPR representations are an appropriate method for presenting cultural landscape and heritage information to the broad public. Key words: virtual landscape reconstruction, 3D visualization interface, realistic experienc