ViRdB : integrating virtual reality and multimedia databases for customized visualization of cultural heritage

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the use of innovative computer graphic technologies to provide far better representations and user-friendly visualization of cultural heritage and in general multimedia information. However, whereas a lot of effort has been devoted to create realistic reconstructions of relevant historical places or ad-hoc 3D tours of important museum exhibitions, not enough work has been carried out to enable dynamic interaction and customization for £nal-users. In this abstract we describe ViRdB – a scalable system with the goal of providing a ¤exible and personalized environment for accessing multimedia contents. In particular, by using an innovative approach for querying a database within a VR environment, the user can retrieve and visualize all and only the information he/she is interested to explore (based on his/her interests, domain experiences, etc), and thus he/she has the freedom of fully customizing the visit.