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3D technology to help gain realistic views of the past

...Our understanding of what life was like in bygone eras could be boosted, thanks to a new initiative aiming to depict more accurately and realistically how heritage sites may have looked in their heyday.

Computer scientists and cultural heritage researchers are assessing whether today's increasingly sophisticated 3D computer technology can be combined with the most recent historical evidence to produce significantly improved visual reconstructions of churches, palaces and other ancient sites.

This could help historians, students and museum visitors gain a much better feel of how such sites were perceived by the people who used them in the past and what it was actually like to be there. The project is being funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The work is being carried out by researchers from Warwick Manufacturing Group and the new Warwick Digital Laboratory, University of Warwick.

In particular, the effects of smoke, dust, fog and interior lighting conditions (all of which would have impacted on the way that buildings were experienced by contemporaries) can now be modelled very accurately, for the first time. New developments in display technology also mean it is possible to produce images that are many times brighter, more vivid in colour, incorporate better contrast between light and dark -- and are therefore much more realistic -- than those previously achievable.

Read entire article at Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK) at Science Daily