Teaching Archaeology in VR: An Academic Perspective

Introduction

After a long period of development and disillusion over the potential of virtual reality, a new digital era is opening tangible and relevant perspectives for research and education. This is due to the large-scale use of low-cost devices (VR headsets, Oculus, HTC, Google VR, and the like) and digital games. Goldman Sachs (Equity Research, January 13, 2016) predicted in January 2016 that virtual reality will overhaul TV by 2025 with a potential market of $ 0.7 billion. We saw more recently an extraordinary technological improvement in the virtual reality headset market, particularly for games and VR applications. Portability, technological standardization, low costs, and ergonomics determined the success of these devices.

The game industry and social media boosted the market of VR in different directions, but what about research and education? How did Universities and research institutions act in this last decade of applications in 3D visualization?

The authors discuss their experience at Duke University and, more specifically, at the Dig@Lab, a core research unit of the CMAC (Computational Media Art and Culture) program in the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies. This community of scholars and students represents a new branch of experimental teaching in digital humanities with the participation of students and faculty from the humanities, engineering, computer science, neuroscience, and visual media. In particular, the Dig@Lab studies the impact of virtual reality in cyberarchaeology (Forte 2010, 2015) and virtual museums. This research work started in 2013 with the development of immersive applications for the DiVE (Duke Immersive Virtual Environment, fig. 1), installed in 2006 and discontinued in 2018. The DiVE was one of the first fourth 6-sided CAVE-like systems in the United States. It was a 3 by 3 by 3 m stereoscopic rear projected room with head and hand tracking and real time computer graphics. All six surfaces—the four walls, the ceiling, and the floor—were used as screens onto which computer graphics is displayed. The lab implemented several archaeological projects for the DiVE: “Virtual Digging Project at Çatalhöyük” (2014-16; Forte 2010, 2014)¹, “the Villa of Livia” (2012-13), “Akrotiri” (2015). All of them were designed for a collaborative experience since the DiVE could host up to seven users simultaneously. In fact, we designed a series of virtual classes for this environment, giving the students specific tasks to accomplish in the 3D space (Appelbaum et al. 2017). One of the biggest issues we faced in the DiVE was the lack of a routine use for research and teaching. Every project in three-dimension had to be specifically redesigned for this environment and all the models rescaled for this purpose. Also, it was a limited collaborative space, given the constraints of the space and the lack of reciprocal interaction among the users.

The new generation of portable systems (such as Oculus, HTC headsets and the like) completely replaced the old VR devices and virtual reality started to be a mass phenomenon.

Figure 1.

DiVE (Duke University): Virtual Digging Project at Çatalhöyük.