Examples in Cultural Heritage

Estimated time: 30 minutes

Overview

Questions

• When is spherical panorama photography used in Cultural Heritage environments?

Objectives

• Lists projects with examples of digitisation using spherical panorama photography of Cultural Heritage

Mānoa Heritage Center, Honolulu, Hawaii. 2022-1025, Fuzheado, under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Spherical panorama images are popular for documenting Cultural Heritage, because:

• They allow to visualise an accurate and rich representation of cultural environment from a vantage point.
• They give the viewer the possibility to explore the surroundings of a certain environment with ease.
• They llow to create Virtual Tours (not to be confused with 3D virtual tours which come from video game techniques).

The article: Panoramic 360◦ Sphere: Digitization and Mobilization of Cultural Heritage Site and Story Visualizing of History for Cultural Tourism, by Ylenia Cariani highlights the benefits of spherical panorama for cultural tourism.

The following are examples of projects using these techniques:

• UNESCO World Heritage Sites
• 360-walkthrough of the-booth-museums osteology gallery
• The Met 360° Project
• Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam
• Arctic Culture And Climate British Museum
• Kuwait National Museum
• National Gallery Guggenheim Museum

Challenge

Think how spherical panorama might provide different or complementary information to 3D models acquired using photogrammetry.

In which cases does it make sense to deploy 360 photography within the context of your project?