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Keeping it Real: Creating and Acquiring Assets for Serious Games

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The Computer Games Journal

Abstract

This paper presents the data collection methodology for a project aimed at creating a virtual game like experience of a historically significant location in Western Australia. The goal is less about just conveying a sense of the place but more about creating an accurate representation. Where data such as imagery and 3D models are used to represent features at the location are unavailable or approximate, they remain missing rather than filling with interpretations or interpolations. The resulting virtual environment is closer to an archeological recording or database rather than simply a 3D environment one can navigate through and experience. It is proposed that the resulting virtual environment takes on an additional believability and appears more real than if it was enhanced by arbitrary modeling and generic texturing. Presented are the data capture methods employed, the limitations encountered in conducting data capture in the field, constraints imposed by current technology and finally the remaining challenges in the various technologies employed.

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Acknowledgments

Initial project funding from Your Community Heritage Grant awarded in 2012 to the Department of Maritime Archaeology at the WA Museum in conjunction with the Department of Fisheries, The University of Western Australia and Flinders University. Project funded by the ARC Linkage “Shipwrecks of the Roaring Forties: A Maritime Archaeological Reassessment of Some of Australia’s Earliest Shipwrecks” (Project LP130100137). Additional funding support from iVEC@UWA at The University of Western Australia. Unity3D contribution by Nick Oliver and building models by Aaron Cross.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. EPICentre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Paul Bourke

  2. Western Australian Museum, Perth, WA, Australia

    Jeremy Green

Authors
  1. Paul Bourke
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  2. Jeremy Green
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Correspondence to Paul Bourke.

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Bourke, P., Green, J. Keeping it Real: Creating and Acquiring Assets for Serious Games. Comput Game J 5, 7–22 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40869-016-0018-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40869-016-0018-z

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