Cultural heritage omni-stereo panoramas for immersive cultural analytics — From the Nile to the Hijaz

The digital imaging acquisition and visualization techniques described here provides a hyper-realistic stereoscopic spherical capture of cultural heritage sites. An automated dualcamera system is used to capture sufficient stereo digital images to cover a sphere or cylinder. The resulting stereo images are projected undistorted in VR systems providing an immersive virtual environment in which researchers can collaboratively study the important textural details of an excavation or historical site. This imaging technique complements existing technologies such as LiDAR or SfM providing more detailed textural information that can be used in conjunction for analysis and visualization. The advantages of this digital imaging technique for cultural heritage can be seen in its non-invasive and rapid capture of heritage sites for documentation, analysis, and immersive visualization. The technique is applied to several significant heritage sites in Luxor, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.