Using a Multi-User Desktop-Based Virtual Reality System to Recreate the São Miguel das Missões Ruins

This paper presents a project initiated back in 1999, in which Virtual Reality is applied in order to create a virtual community over the Internet. The desktop-based multi-user virtual reality system recreates a three-dimensional environment based on photogrammetric maps from the São Miguel das Missões church ruins. The ruins correspond to one of the Jesuit Mission (settlement) which was active in the south of Brazil in the 17th and 18th centuries. It has a great importance to the local region in terms of cultural, historic, and tourist aspects. It has also been inscribed in the UNESCO's world heritage list since 1983. This electronic mock-up allows several interactive operations such as community chats, electronic message exchanging, message boards, walking-through, discussion groups, and embedding of other media such as movies, sound, and html pages. The only requirement necessary to access the community is a web browser powered with any Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) plug-in freely available over the Internet. It is expected that such a solution improves the conservation and dissemination of the Brazilian historic patrimony, congregating history, art, and tourist information in one place on the Internet.