Immersiveness in Virtual Heritage: Experiences of Rio de Janeiro

This article proposes to discuss the concept of immersiveness within the context of digital heritage, using experiences proposed for historical spaces and architecture objects in Rio de Janeiro to enhance the importance of different immersion experiences to build heritage awareness. We discuss that attention to immersion ought to be a cornerstone of digital heritage interpretation environments, because of its potential to create emotional, subjective attachment to what is being represented. Immersion is examined not only as a perceptual construct where one’s senses are taken by the representation; but also as a psychological absorption resulting from the possibilities of action and interference in space. The sense of awe, in the first case, and the embodiment of the spatial constraints, in the latter, operate on an emotional level of engagement such as that is required by heritage interpretation. We examine three examples from the Laboratory of Urban Analysis and Digital Representation at the Graduate Program in Urbanism of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro to further understand the different types of immersion in works involving both VR and AR: SimRio, a game-engine based visualization of Largo de São Francisco in different time periods; the virtual reconstruction of parts of the city based on a panorama painted by Victor Meirelles and Henri Langerock in 1888, and the visualization of the Plan made by Alfred Agache for the city in AR.