Browsing in the Xirtual Ouseum of the Uarcophagi in the Basilica of St. Silvestro at the Catacombs of Priscilla in Rome Laura Pecchioli Seminar for the Languages and Cultures of the Near East Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg Heidelberg, Germany E-mail: laura.pecchioli@gmx.de Fawzi Mohamed Department of Chemistry Humboldt University Berlin, Germany E-mail: fawzi@gmx.ch Mirco Pucci Dipartimento di Architettura, Disegno Storia e Progetto University of Florence Florence, Italy E-mail: mirco.pucci@gmail.com Barbara Mazzei Responsabile Settore Restauro, Musei e Archivi PCAS Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra Rome, Italy E-mail: bmazzei@arcsacra.va Abstract—This paper outlines a program (ISEE) to visualise interactive 3D environments and access information through the Web. ISEE had been prototyped as content management tool with Internet Explorer since 2008 and currently supports the major browsers. Its database of information is stored in MySQL. The basic idea of the software is to enable information retrieval by simply looking inside a 3D environment, since moving and looking in the real world are basic interactions, which all viewers use. It ranks the relevant information by means of its position/orientation of the viewer in 3D space. The ranking algorithm that we developed matches the intuitive expectation of users as verified by means of formal usability tests. We present its application in the project in progress for the Museum of the sculpture in the Basilica of St. Silvestro at the Catacombs of Priscilla in Rome, where the user will be able to retrieve information through the virtual visit and using QR-code in situ for each fragment of sarcophagi. An important aspect with internet usage is the optimisation of the 3D model. This has been achieved creating a low poly 3D mesh with the application of normal and displacement maps generated with a baking process of the high poly 3D model. In this way we have optimized for the Web and the interactive use. To reduce the chromatic aberration a massive photographic campaign was used to texturize the 3D model through a camera matching process. The result is a low poly 3D model fully texturized ready to use and imported in many 3D viewers. Normally we use the Unity 3D technology (http://unity3d.com) to visualize and interactively navigate 3D models. The Unity plug-in is available for all the major browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari) and platforms (Windows, OsX). Our interdisciplinary collaboration is a contribute to try an innovative solution for the accessing and managing the information in its context. Keywords-component; web-based visualization, sarcophagi, relevant information, catacomb, 3D Gaussian. I. INTRODUCTION In Cultural Heritage the information is often gained from different sources and in varying formats, and to deal with a uniform treatment of heterogeneous data is not easy. The problem arising therefore is: how to provide a unified management methodology of the information and to enable an access for this kind of information to large audiences [1]. Moreover the objects have often a strong 3D component and cannot be easily represented with a 2D map. The use of the new technologies has also changed the perception and interaction with the analysed object in the investigations. The application of 3D technologies to the Cultural Heritage gives requirements on the underlying technologies in terms of accuracy, performance and usability providing rich interdisciplinary research and development opportunities [2- 3]. Virtual reality, can recreate an incomplete or lost object. The Archaeology and Cultural Heritage domain is characterized by an increasing volume of 3D digital content, and one main focus of interest remains the reconstructions for virtual visitors [4]. Some interesting examples of the last years are the applications as in Persepolis [5], for the Almaqah Temple of Yeha in Ethiopia [6], the historical Baalbek [7], and the Villa Adriana in Rome [8]. The attractiveness of such environments allows the researchers, to simulate the structure and artefacts in their context. In situations of environments with accessibility 978-1-4673-2565-3/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE 413