PLVS for Circus Maximus Mixed-Reality Experience

If you are visiting Rome, now you can go to the Circus Maximus and enjoy a great Mixed-Reality experience. An immersive tour brings you through all the historical phases on the Circus Maximus, from the simple and first construction of the Circus in wood to the glories of the Imperial Roman age, from the Middle Ages to the first decades of the 1900s. You can find more information about the tours here:
• http://www.circomaximoexperience.it/en/
• https://www.romatoday.it/eventi/cultura/circo-massimo-experience-visita-virtuale.html

The project is promoted by Roma Capitale (Department of Cultural Growth – Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali), organized by Zètema Progetto Cultura and created by Inglobe Technologies and GS NET Italia.

The use of Zeiss VR One Plus viewers coupled with iPhone smartphones and stereo earphones allow visitors to enjoy a unique experience while visiting the archaeological site.

In order to prepare the AR and VR experiences, the Circus Maximus archeological site was accurately reconstructed in 3D, and the obtained 3D model was registered to the 3D maps used by the iPhones. These operations were possible thanks to my software framework PLVS, which I privately developed. PLVS is an RBG-D and Stereo SLAM System with Keypoints, Keylines, Volumetric Mapping, and 3D Incremental Segmentation. On this occasion, it was a pleasure for me to let Inglobe Technologies use PLVS. I personally collected the video data and then produced the 3D reconstruction by using PLVS with a ZED camera. In particular, PLVS was run both in online and offline mode. The attained high-quality reconstruction of the archaeological site and the localization of reference spots allowed an accurate alignment/placement of the mixed-reality 3D models to the actual reference terrain and structures. Now you can enjoy these 3D models in the AR experiences.

The following pic shows a partial reconstruction of the Circus Maximus archeological site obtained by using PLVS. You can find more details about PLVS on this page. I am working during my free time to improve PLVS.  The code is available as open source.

Here you can find other details