Abstract
Virtual interactive experience created for the Picture gallery of Jesi (Italy). Namely, three interactive works realized with Unreal Engine 4 to give the spectator a greater immersiveness on the immortal pictures of Lorenzo Lotto. The goal was achieved by creating three choreographies with audio supervised by a historian, recreation of the works with three-dimensional graphics and a specially composed soundtrack by Tecla Zorzi. The augmented reality (AR) application was realized specifically for Android tablets.
TopAr And Vr In Gamification: New Ways To Experience Reality (Mixed Reality, Last Frontiers Of Gamification)
Thanks to new software and hardware technologies, the user can experience ever more immersive and tangible experiences from our senses.
Thanks to special viewers that isolate the user from the surrounding environment, Virtual Reality allows to enter an immaterial space, digitally created and to live it not through the perception of a luminous rectangle, like the screen, but through a spherical projection that develops around the user. Through these new devices, the user can turn his head and look at this world from the angle he prefers, moving inside thanks to joysticks or more advanced devices that allow the real movement of the body. Thanks to gesture technology and hand recognition, the experience becomes even more realistic and immersive, bringing the user to have a “tactile” relationship with virtual objects: although he cannot actually touch them, he is able to manipulate them with same gestures that he would carry out in reality. VR is used in entertainment and gaming, creating more and more engaging gaming experiences.
Initially used to build HUDs1, the latest Augmented Reality technology is very different, allowing us to enrich the world around us with digital content. In this way, the user is not estranged from the real world, never losing visual contact with it, but rather enriching it with digital interactive content.
The fields of application of AR are manifold, from the simple display of useful information in places like stations and roads (let's think of Google Maps AR), up to the interaction between public and work in a museum.
Recent examples are the Google Street View AR, which recognizes buildings and streets and allows orientation through digital road signs, and Google Lens, a tool that allows the recognition of texts, their translation, the recognition of objects and products.
A Military Jet HUD
The Mixed Reality superimposes the virtual reality to the physical one observing the real world by drawing information in AR or allows to see and move virtual objects that interact with the analog world perfectly integrated with the environment.
The landing on the market is still far away but in recent years many experiments have been made, one of these is Microsoft's HoloLens: a device, similar to a helmet for VR technology, which includes transparent lenses that allow the visualization of one's field visual and information about it in AR. HoloLens can be adapted to different types of applications, from assistance in the construction and maintenance of any project to playful applications such as the visualization of the Minecraft world on one's home table, allowing for complete interaction.
What We Produced And How
The project “APP: Open Palazzo Pianetti” was promoted by the Municipality of Jesi, Italy, in response to the Call for Culture 2018 of the Cariverona Foundation.
The idea wants to equip the Civic Museums of Palazzo Pianetti with an instrument of inclusion and accessibility, strengthened by the desire to bring interactivity of the playful world closer to the museum environment, in order to facilitate the approach of a new target, like children, elderly, visually impaired and blind, to art and culture.
The project was developed in collaboration with other Italian excellences, such as Marchingegno, Palazzo Pianetti and RossodiGrana.
The inclusive application makes the museum's contents playful and accessible through three different thematic routes corresponding to the three exhibition areas: treasure hunts for children, narrative guides and augmented reality applications.
MenteZero was involved in the creation of interactive applications in Augmented Reality, trying to combine modern technologies with a fruition of the works of Lorenzo Lotto, which gave an added value to the already present enormous historical value of the paintings, proposing an alternative vision to the analogue one and looking for to give emotions and perspectives alternative to the usual ones, so as to be lived as an experience.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Lorenzo Lotto: He was one of the main exponents of the Venetian Renaissance of the early sixteenth century, although his original and unconventional nature soon led him to a sort of marginalization from the lagoon context, dominated by Titian. He then moved a lot, turning with his example the schools of areas considered peripheral to the great artistic centers, such as Bergamo and the Marche. His human story was sometimes marked by bitter failures and bitter disappointments - partly filled by the revaluation in modern criticism - which make his figure a suffered, introverted and humoral subject, of great modernity. https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo_Lotto
Augmented Reality: It is a superposition of digital data in the real world, providing the user with real-time contextual information in the surrounding environment, creating, as explained in the previous chapter, a useful interaction in the analogic world.
Mixed-Reality: It is the combination of Virtual Reality, Augmented Virtuality, Augmented Reality. Palazzo Pianetti: It is an ancient noble palace in the city of Jesi, in the Marche region. Today it is home to the Civic Art Gallery. It was the ancient city residence of the Marquis Pianetti, a noble and prestigious family aggregated to the Jesuit aristocracy since 1659. It represents the most significant of the buildings belonging to the rich local noble families, and the only example in Italy of Rococo style of Central European influence. https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palazzo_Pianetti
Microsoft's HoloLens: A device, similar to a helmet for VR technology, which includes transparent lenses that allow the visualization of one's field visual and information about it in AR. HoloLens can be adapted to different types of applications, from assistance in the construction and maintenance of any project to playful applications such as the visualization of the Minecraft world on one's home table, allowing for complete interaction.
Gamification: Mix user interaction and user interface with the language and dynamics of the game, exploiting the new language used by video games together with the mechanics of the Game Design, combining the use of technological means and the learning of notions or procedures the entertainment of the game.
Virtual Reality: It is the one in which the user finds himself in a world completely simulated by the stranger from physical Reality, completely immersing him in a simulated environment that replaces the senses of sight and hearing with the real ones created in an exclusive interaction with cyberspace.