Dipartimento di Informatica
Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia
Technical Report Series in Computer Science
CS-99-29
Walking on the Edge of the Well of the Itza:
The Reconstruction of an Ancient Maya Metropolis
in the Centre of the Northern Yucatan
F. Pittarello
Abstract
The three-d reconstruction of the ancient maya city of Chichen Itza,
realized in occasion of the Maya display held at Palazzo Grassi in Venice
(1998-99), represents a new chapter of the Palazzo Grassi official web
site. This work is part of a research aimed at experimenting tools for
three-d scene navigation, in order to improve the usability
of simulation for desktop vr applications. This is a significant issue for
multimedia systems integrated in cultural displays or multimedia titles
using three-d visualization for large masses of users. The most part of
three-d worlds representations conceived for personal computers offer
panoramic pre-defined views or fragment large worlds into
various scenes. The Chichen Itza project attempts to find an alternative
solution, realizing a single fully navigable simulation: the goal is to
give the user a comprehensive view of the city and, at the same time, to
let him to examine the relationships between the single parts of Chichen
Itza from any possible point of view; besides, an alternative
interface has been implemented to allow the examination of the single
monumental buildings. A lot of work has
been devoted to the optimization and modularization of vector models both
to achieve a decent frame rate on average computers and to have acceptable
download times from the network.
The concept of locus, introduced in a previous work as an attempt to give
a better structure to virtual scenes, has been enforced and utilized here
to help the user to orient itself through the city.
Return to technical report list.