Optimization of Cultural Heritage Virtual Environments for Gaming Applications

Abstract

Serious games are games with a purpose beyond entertainment and are widely acknowledged as fruitful tools for learning and skills development across multiple domains, including specifically educational enhancement. In these last years, the world of serious games has been widely increased. Until now, the purpose that push these phenomena is to educate the alumni of the classrooms. Games have been shown to be powerful complements to classroom-based education, enhancing both learning and motivation to learn. Game design requires significant specialist knowledge and can be very time-consuming and costly. Furthermore, transitions between instructional design and game implementation is acknowledged as lacking methodology. Our challenge was to design a serious game that was an adventure games as well, available on any platform, friendly user and free download on web. To achieve this great goal, it was necessary to overcome the limits and problems due to the virtual environment starting from 3D acquire, finishing to the image stability. In this chapter we show the flowchart and methodology for optimization of cultural heritage virtual environment for gaming application.