Virtual Bornholm - The medieval visualizer

Project title (English):	Virtual Bornholm
Language (report):	English
Problem formulation:	For many years now, there has been broad historical interest in seeing the environments of the past. Often, this has been difficult to visualize in a video feed, and the designer of such a visualization application would have to model and texture both the existing ground plane and the inserted houses and other objects. Instead of modeling all, we propose to make an application which uses a video feed of the current landscape, and then inserts 3D models in the places where such once existed. Such an algorithm will save time from modeling and texturing difficult landscapes, while at the same time giving more time to create the objects which are supposed to be inserted in the landscape. This thesis project will focus on developing an application which uses video feeds taken from air planes, to visualize how the landscape of the Danish island of Bornholm looked many years ago. Geometrical information will be taken from the video feeds to determine placement, rotation and scale of 3D objects which are inserted on the landscape. The main goals of our thesis project is to create an application which can automatically insert 3D Computer Graphics objects in a live video feed consisting of a landscape seen from an airplane view. This will give the possibility to insert non existing houses in the landscape, thereby for example visualizing how the landscape used to look like 500 years ago. Common use for this type of application could be to let museums give a “flying tour” over a landscape, or to let architects show how their planned buildings could look if implemented in the landscape.
Method:	The methods used will be highly experimental, with partial literature studies. The methods used will be taken from the areas of Image Analysis, Computer Vision and Computer Graphics. We aim to use Computer Vision methods to find the geometry of the landscape in the video feed. Computer Graphics will then be used to insert, scale and rotate the objects, such as houses, in the scene, aiming to make it look like they belong in the finished video. To find the location for object placing in the video images, we will use Image Analysis methods, which will also help in finding realistic scale and rotation of the objects.
What will be handed in:	We will hand in a report describing the work that we have done (analysis, design, implementation, test etc.) and a CD containing report and source code, including instructions on how to compile the code, and run the prototype application that is the outcome of this project.