Landscape Archaeology is a crucial topic, fundamental to understand any site.

While there are plenty of projects focused on 3D reconstructions of Roman buildings, landscape archaeology is still not enough treated by virtual museums. This

testbed focuses on an interested case study, that is Roman landscape. How Romans used their territory in the area around Rome (suburbium)? How they modified its natural aspect to comply with the urban development and the increase of population? How where organised villas in the suburbium?

Virtual Rome project in 2007-2008 (http://3d.cineca.it/storage/demo_vrome/htdocs/) has tried to face the issue and deal with landscape archaeology, developing a browser plug-in. Moreover it has also tried to manage on line 3D models and related information developing a simple back-end. This test-bed aim to

re-use the digital asset created for the project Virtual Rome, improving their quality, integrating new models, improving user interface and interaction design, and porting it to the new plug-in OSG4WEB. It also focuses on testing new solutions for 3D on-line that would not require to install any plug-in (OSGjs and ReadyMap; SpiderGL and Nexus; x3dom solution for terrain).

The ultimate goal will be to offer an online experience for expert and not-expert users, who could fly over the territory, switch among different landscape models (including also interpretation models obtained with different rendering techniques), or walk into one of the available sites. The testbed, from an ICT perspective, will also be used to define the next researches needed in the field of web3d and terrains.

Created by Carlotta Capurro