Duisburg 1566: Transferring a Historic 3D City Model from Google Earth into a Virtual Reality Application

Physical and digital city models are idealized and simplified representations of spatial, social, economic and cultural structures of a city in a certain region for a specific (historical) timeframe. The presentation of historical city models as physical models in museums gives an overview of the urban situation at a given time in a specified scale, while the visualisation on the Internet permits a playful immersion into the past of a city. Historic city/town models are ideally suited both for thorough multi-dimensional geometric documentation and for realistic interactive visualisation in immersive virtual reality (VR) applications. VR is increasingly in use for visiting (historic) virtual places to enhance a visitor’s experience by providing access to additional materials for review and knowledge deepening. Using today’s available 3D technologies a virtual place is no longer just a presentation of geometric environments on the Internet, but with features—provided by game industry tools—an interactive visualisation of objects can be achieved. In this paper the conversion and adaptation of an existing virtual 3D model for a VR application is presented. The model of the city of Duisburg, Germany, is based on the year 1566 and exists as a physical model and was digitised for a Google Earth representation in 2007. The workflow from data acquisition using laser scanning in 2007 to the visualisation in 2018 using the VR system HTC Vive, including the necessary programming for user navigation and interactions, is described. Furthermore, the use (including simultaneous use of multiple end-users) of such a VR visualisation for historic city models is discussed.