Playing the Past

Cultural Heritage

Playing the Past is an organisation where a small team of developers uses modern 3D game technology as a tool to visualise cultural heritage, archeology and virtual exibitions. Within the world of heritage, people tend to automatically make use of 3D models and panoramic applications. Reconstruction models, 360° views in QuickTime and video capturing inside models have all been tried and tested.
Despite the fact that the artistic quality is often of a very high standard, we tend to forget that these are merely ‘augmented pictures’, often providing no more than a static rendering of a given object. The visitors/spectators are still expected to rely heavily on their powers of empathy and imagination. Important aspects that should reinforce their experience, such as sounds, weather conditions and realistic and dynamic lighting are often lost.
Starting from these needs and limitations, a different visualisation technique was sought to offer the virtual visitor a different experience. An opportunity was found in the field of computer games and their engines.

3D Game Technology

The graphic quality of environments in 3D Game technology has improved tremendously the last 10 years. Nowadays modern video games can render scenes almost photorealisticly. This level of realism is perfect to visualise cultural heritage with a strong focus on atmosphere and immersion, which is almost impossible with static 3D renders.
Video games also provide the perfect means to bring cultural heritage closer to children, who are used to walk around in these virtual worlds.

Team

The core development team of Playing the Past consists out of Bas Bogaerts, archaeologist and Steven Delrue, multimedia & game developer.