CIPA 2003 XIX 11 ' International Symposium, 30 September-04 October, 2003, Antalya, Turkey 
3. RESULTS 
The following figures illustrate the results of the adoption of the 
VHD++ framework for the rapid creation of the immersive VR 
application prototype. A Christie Mirage 1000 wall projector 
was used to provide both active and passive stereo projection, 
as VHD++ supports sequential stereo rendering (viewed with 
either shutter or polarised glasses). Thus the immersive aspect 
of the VR simulation was ensured. The final VR application 
was executed in a PC system, rendering real-time environments 
ranging from 60k to 400k polygons, lOk-polygons humans with 
deformable skins, while running on a Win 2000, 2GB RAM, 
Pentium 1.5GHz, with NVIDIA Quadro 4 980XGL graphics 
card, yielding 25fps performance. 
Figure 3 S.Sergius & Bacchus Ottoman Mosque 
Figure 4 S.Sergius & Bacchus Byzantine Church 
Figure 5 Hagia Sophia Ottoman Mosque 
Figure 6 Hagia Sophia Byzantine Church 
Figure 7 S.Sergius & Bacchus Mosque with real-time 
virtual Imam in recreated Namaz Pray 
Figure 8 S.Sergius & Bacchus Mosque with a group of 
virtual characters 
4. CONCLUSIONS 
We are living in a world in which the arts, sciences and 
technology are becoming inextricably integrated strands in a 
new emerging cultural fabric [Coyne]. Our knowledge of 
ourselves expands with the advent of new technologies that 
provide new tools for both communication and expression as 
well as a social context for daily experiences. Culture is in its 
broader sense a ‘product’ of our everyday life and experiences 
[Salzburg Research], The actual records of culture are 
constituted from performances to artefacts that have been 
created in a persistent manner but inevitable decay. That is 
depicted in the notion of cultural heritage where it consists of 
what is called “Tangible Heritage” such as buildings, artefacts 
and media as well as the “Intangible Heritage” containing art 
expressions (music, dance, literature etc.), languages, folklore 
etc. Michael Chrichton in his novel Timeline [Chrichton] gives 
an example of a social context of the future where time travel to 
the past can be a unique mean of actually feeling experiences 
characterised by both pathos 1 and ethos 2 , integral connotations 
of the term cultural heritage. 
Virtual restitution of highly complex heritage sites requires 
accurate choices for each phase of the modelling, texturing or 
lighting processes and special attention must be used when the 
1 Pathos: 1. that quality in speech, writing, music, or artistic 
representation (or in events, circumstances, persons, etc.), 
which excites a feeling of pity or sadness... 2. In reference to 
art, esp. ancient Greek art: The quality of the transient or 
emotional, as opposed to the permanent or ideal. Source: 
Oxford English Dictionary 
2 Ethos: 1. the characteristic spirit, prevalent tone of sentiment, 
of a people or community; the ‘genius’ of an institution or 
system. 2. In reference to ancient æsthetic criticism and 
rhetoric. Aristotle's statement that Polygnotus excelled all other 
painters in the representation of ‘ethos’ app. meant simply that 
his pictures expressed ‘character’; but as Aristotle elsewhere 
says that this painter portrayed men as nobler than they really 
are, some modern writers have taken ethos to mean ‘ideal 
excellence.’... Source: Oxford English Dictionary