Then/Now: 3-D Virtual Space as Temporal Telescope

Principal Investigators

Patrick FitzGerald, North Carolina State University, Advanced Media Lab, College of Design
Melissa Church, North Carolina State University, Advanced Media Lab, College of Design

Project Description

Then/Now is a 3-D interactive digital world featuring various parts of the NCSU campus. This interactive space allows viewers to freely explore the virtual campus while encouraging them to interact with virtual multimedia “kiosks” featuring archived image, text and audio of historic buildings, spaces and events related to NCSU’s campus. These digital kiosks are strategically placed in the same camera location and orientation as the original archived photos, allowing viewers a chance to both see multimedia displays of the past and participate in a new, virtual space.

The NCSU Advanced Media Lab team has created a valuable resource of tutorials on the basics of Unity 3D, available at http://vimeo.com/channels/ncsuunity.

Joyce Rudinsky, domain scientist for the arts and humanities at the Renaissance Computing Institute, has facilitated this project in collaboration with RENCI technologists and coordinated the display of the project in the UNC/RENCI Engagement Site Visualization rooms.