An Augmented Reality Presentation System for Remote Cultural Heritage Sites

Museums often lack the possibility to present archaeological or cultural heritage sites in a realistic and interesting way. Thus are proposing a new way to show augmented reality applications of cultural heritage sites at remote places like museums. In the exhibition space large wall-filling photographs of the real site are superimposed with interactive contextual annotations like 3D reconstructions, images and movies. Therefore we are using two different hardware setups for visualization: Standard UMPCs and a custom made revolving display. The setup has been installed and tested at SIGGRAPH 2008, Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam and CeBIT 2009. Museum visitors could experience Forum Romanum and Satricum in an informative and intuitive way by pointing the video see through devices on different areas of the photographs. The result is a more realistic and entertaining way for presenting cultural heritage sites in museums. Furthermore our solution is less expensive than comparable installations regarding content and hardware.