Project carried out with funds from the European Community POR

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THE PATH OF SAINT BENEDICT

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The Project

Scope:

• Enhance the cultural sites involved and the Way of Saint Benedict in its richness of material and immaterial culture
  
• Develop new and innovative cultural contents in the audiovisual sector
• Improve the use of cultural heritage and tourist services
  
• Technological innovation for the enhancement of heritage and the development of tourism
  
• Improve networking between the structures involved
  
• Use technologies to expand accessibility to various users with specific attention to people with disabilities
  
• Promote the competitiveness of the proposing company and those involved
  
• Promote artists, specialized figures linked to artistic craftsmanship, local producers linked to the territories involved
  
• Promote participation and sharing of common goods
  
• Promote tourism and folklore linked to ​the Way of Saint Benedict

Subiaco and the Way of San Benedetto: a path of just over 300 km that enters Lazio from Umbria, traveling from north to south through the most beautiful villages and monasteries such as those of Subiaco and Montecassino. path to be done on foot, bicycle that combines the beauty of nature, landscape, villages with their history, food and wine, art and crafts. And from Subiaco this project starts to walk the path of San Benedetto through the virtual reality, videogames and 3D installations. A new 3D world at the disposal of a territorial marketing operation. A playful and educational approach to approach the public of the little ones on the one hand and the virtuality of ’interactivity to make this journey experience even for those who are millions of kilometers away. Technologies at the service of cultural heritage that make it possible to virtually make cultural places “visible ” which otherwise would not be usable because they

are unavailable or because they are not accessible to the various disabilities.

1. Reference context on the territory and objectives

The "Subiaco and the Way of St. Benedict" project starts from an international context that sees a growing shift from the real to the virtual in the tourist, social and cultural experience. It was decided to focus on places of culture that tell the story of internal Lazio, through the common thread offered by the Path of San Benedetto, patron saint of Europe.

The general objective that the beneficiary company has set itself is to give value to the historical, artistic and cultural heritage that internal Lazio holds, through the free provision of a virtual world in which the selected places are available to all.

Specific objectives are instead those that see a new tourist proposal of the territories of interest, with the most modern and engaging of the brochures; increase the number of "visitors" by easily breaking down the architectural barriers that stand between historical assets with a strong cultural and religious impact and people with motor disabilities or otherwise unable to travel; maintain a historical, virtual memory of the selected places, able to preserve their features in detail following any unfortunate event or in case of restoration.

2. Activities carried out

The project has based all its strength on new technologies that allow virtualization from reality, with a very high degree of fidelity and realism. Technologies, among other things, which have been greatly updated and improved already in the short duration of the project, with the same having followed its step, often preceding them.

Through a series of acquisitions of geospatial data using mixed techniques, the object of know-how available to the beneficiary, acquired and/or formulated internally, the museum pole of the Rocca dei Borgia, the Sacro Speco di Subiaco and the Montecassino Abbey, retracing the footsteps that San Benedetto made in his life and which are now part of the path that bears his name.

The technologies used were acquired thanks to public funding. They made it possible to survey the sites using both aerial and terrestrial photogrammetry and laser scanners. The large amount of data collected was processed locally on a dedicated working station in order to obtain a 3D model that was not only technically accurate, from which it is possible to extract information on the surveyed places of a geometric nature, but also graphically realistic. The cross-use of laser and photogrammetric technologies has allowed these results by anticipating the rapidly developing market trend. The detail obtained reaches in most of the points a precision of the geospatial coordinates, identifying the point/pixel, lower than the centimetre.

The major interventions were carried out on three sites as follows:

the Rocca di Subiaco was surveyed from the outside with aerial photogrammetry. The two floors of the Rocca, the rooms open to the public, were surveyed with mixed technique, and can be reached from the dedicated online platform. In particular, the photogrammetric survey involved a team of two technicians on several occasions and days, even discontinuous, to ensure a complete survey through control feedback given by the result outputs processed on the working station. In particular, the aerial lidar survey was performed last to ensure that the model obtained had technical characteristics identifiable in a universal system (RTK), and that it was properly scaled and roto-translated. The same workflow was used for all sites discovered;

the Sacro Speco was built starting from the outside, flying over the cliff it overlooks. We proceeded with a photogrammetric survey of the interiors and crypts, crossed with lidar survey data to guarantee their technical characteristics;

the Abbey was taken over in its entirety from the outside by air. All the internal gardens, statues and internal arches were then taken over. The interiors were surveyed using manual photogrammetry and a fixed laser scanner. Given the height of the domes and the wealth of details in the frescoes, reliefs were carried out several meters above the ground with suitable supports.

An adaptation of the 3D objects (mesh) obtained was therefore carried out, in order to make their navigation and exploration interactive and immersive, obtaining easily usable results. All while maintaining a very high degree of graphic fidelity and more. The process envisaged the intervention of a team of external and internal professionals of the company, who provided for the photographic reworking of the material collected in order to guarantee the possibility of reconstructing the 3D model. The three-dimensional data was therefore reduced in weight through the retopologization technique. This allows virtual visitors to simultaneously use remote servers on which the models have been loaded, in an almost completely independent way from the capacity of the device used for navigation.

The data thus "lightened" were then uploaded to servers accessible remotely, from any device (smartphone, tablet, PC) equipped with a data connection.

To ensure cross-platform visibility, a series of CGI videos have been created. The video, unlike the 3D models, also allows people with serious cognitive difficulties to explore and learn about the places surveyed and the history of the Saint. In fact, these represent a virtual navigation within the virtualized sites listed above. A further video, available in both English and Italian, tells the story of the Saint in a few minutes and serves as an introduction to the project. The Saint speaks in the first person. For the realization of this last video, the technique of animation via motion capture was used, in order to make the movement of the 3D character natural. This was modeled and then animated with mixed techniques, aimed at recognizing the movements first of the body and then of the facial expressions (also to ensure lip sync). These techniques make use of specific hardware and software. In particular, facial recognition uses the depth camera and analysis software to recognize dozens of facial expressions.

A user-friendly website was then created which will remain in the future as a showcase for the territory in which the virtualized places arise and the realities it has to offer. The site was created with the specific aim of not limiting the action of the project to the results described here but to give access in the future to commercial activities in the area and to tour operators to use the portal as a showcase for their business. The site offers all the virtualized files, a description of the places and a story of the life of the saint. At the same time, all the activity was promoted through the social profiles of Visual Art.

A free video game available for download from the dedicated website was created to allow the little ones to get closer to the world of the Saint whose story connects the selected places of culture. The video game aims not to make the narrative too complex precisely because it is for the target audience. It is in fact a very simple quest in which you take on the role of a friar, a disciple of San Benedetto, and help the latter to find the medals, symbol of the Saint, in a setting in which we imagined San Benedetto himself passed the years alive. The video game features simple and standardized controls and a lode that can be played multiple times with ease. It is a video game developed for computer compatibility.

At the end of the project, an event was held to inaugurate the website and present the potential of the new tools. These were attended by experts from the tourism sector, representatives of institutions, local artisan realities and a large number of visitors. During the event, practical examples of integration between the virtual product and the hardware were also provided, this too adapted to the specific needs of the market referred to in the objectives, thanks to the know-how acquired, by navigation and direct experience of the visitor, to in order to maximize the result of immersion in virtual reality, even for a very young or disabled audience. During the event a buffet banquet was also offered and a costume performance was offered with live music and choreography by a group of

In fact, a 5D station has been installed for an immersive experience in the surveyed places, simulating a flight over the mountains on which they rise. All with a specific station and the use of VR viewers. Furthermore, the models created were the setting for an immersive exploration of the visitors through the use of VR equipment such as a viewer connected to a PC for lower latency and greater computational capacity, an omnidirectional platform to move freely within the 3D model and the use of sensors capable of capturing and translating user movements into IT language.

Meanwhile, a relationship of mutual collaboration has been established with many professionals in the sector aimed at enhancing in-coming tourism and exporting local culture.

3. Results achieved

All the places originally identified as Places of Culture have been faithfully reproduced in 3D graphics and are available on the dedicated website, continuously updated and optimized (SEO and UserExp). A series of videos made in CGI are also made available to users, which allow viewing of the reproduced material and knowledge of the history of the Saint.

The beneficiary maintains numerous relationships. with professionals in the tourism sector and with representatives of local institutions, particularly enthusiastic about the results achieved.

There was also an excellent response from the visitors to the final event held, having been able to directly experience futuristic and highly immersive technologies.

A virtual historical memory, highly reliable both graphically and from a technical point of view (scales, measurements and sections) has been created and preserved and will be useful for renovation works such as those aimed at restoring the collapsed roof of the Subiaco museum complex .

The website created constitutes a platform of tourist information, entertainment and commercial offer for the local sector linked to the culture of the places. It has been prepared for the implementation of the virtual panorama of all the places forming part of the Way. These are all currently possible targets of similar activities that fall well within the context of the platform.

The beneficiary has carried out one of the few projects in the world, to date, with these characteristics and has put in place useful practices for the entire sector which can well be re-proposed in other contexts, in favor of the whole territory.

The project was taken as a starting point for innovation in the sector and was appreciated at the BIT 2022 in Milan, in a special panel, at the invitation of Lazio Innova and the Lazio Region.