Holography

According to the dictionary, holography is the science and practice of making holograms. Many people prefer holograms because they can experience this technology without technological constrains. Users don’t need to carry 3D glasses or wear any piece of equipment in order to look at a hologram. Unlike Augmented Reality applications, holograms exhibit visual depth cues such as parallax and perspective that change realistically with any change in the relative position of the observer.

Holographic stands are not a new technology. However, with the recent advances in TV screens, it is now easier than ever to build a large high quality display. We present below a system developed by our team in the last year of the project. The stand showcases several fortified churches from “Țara Bâsei”, a small region of Transylvania. Although some of these churches are on UNESCO’s list of protected monuments, they are not usually included in mainstream visiting circuits. Our aim was to increase the visibility of these landmarks and to market them to tourists passing through our region.

We have used photogrammetry to build the 3D models of 6 fortified churches and of the Castle Bran. Tens of thousands of pictures were processed to obtain optimized models of these edifices. Some of these models are available in our Repository section.

A Bluetooth connected tablet allows users to select among these churches, and provides additional information for each selected item.

The stand was showcased on several occasions during events such as EU Open Day, AFCO 2018, Researchers’ Night 2018, VRTCH’18 or AFASES 2018. We also are planning to use it in temporal exhibitions in some of the most visited fortified churches, in order to raise awareness on the others less known to general public.