Hal Saflieni Hypogeum by VR
Anything … Anywhere
Faculty members from the creative computing department at Saint Martin’s Institute of Higher Education is working to showcase Malta’s rich built heritage, even as complex and delicate as the World Heritage Site -Hal Saflieni Hypogeum - to a wide audience anywhere in the world, using leading edge technology.
The Institute’s focus in its research efforts are in the use of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 360° filming and Computer Generated Imaging (CGI) in order to enhance User Experience (UX), providing accessibility and learning opportunities about cultural heritage sites and monuments. With very limited access to the underground monument in order to protect and preserve the four and half thousand year subterranean complex thought to be the oldest mass burial space ever discovered, the Institute is researching how such a precious monument may be enjoyed by the world’s nations exploring the many world heritage sites at the same time conserving them for future generations.
Setting the environment
The experience is to be the real Hal Saflieni Hypogeum and not a CGI rendition by digital artists. The details in the virtual reality environment had to be as close to reality as technology would permit.
Heritage Malta offered a point cloud from laser scanning the agency commissioned for conservation purposes, and after importing it into the Unity® Game Engine, that provided the internal structures representing the real underground complex. The result is a tailored VR experience embracing the principles of User Experience Design and 3D Graphics allowing users to fly around the catacombs and explore chambers that are now physically impossible to access by visitors to the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum.
The Hal Saflieni Hypogeum VR experience allows users to explore every part of the complex with high definition imagery in real time and in great detail. In the main chambers, the visitor is able to move towards signposted information boards, enabling the visitor to read the information, as well as listening to a guide explaining the salient points of the area accompanied by ambiance sounds. A location map is included to help guide the visitor in the exploration of the complex.
The Covid-19 after effects
All was set to launch the VR experience of the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum an exhibition on March 13th allowing people to visit it virtually by wearing an Oculus® Rift Headset at the Museum of Archaeology in Valletta, Malta. Alas, the medical emergency due to the global pandemic stinted the opportunity for people to enjoy the experience, yet the creative computing team at Saint Martin’s Institute embarked on developing ‘lightweight’ extractions from the main project, for people to be able to enjoy them from home using personal headsets or their own smart phone.
The Awakening
The team worked to develop a short film of the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, using the virtual reality model to shoot the scenes. At no time has a camera set foot in the world heritage site to shoot this film, but has been shot in its totality virtually, literally transporting the director and cameramen into the virtual model to shoot the film.
Following are some screen shots taken from the film.
The dawn
This shot is one of the most exciting of the project.
Since all three layers of the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum are subterranean, very few people know that the upper layer was actually above ground four millennia ago. Without razing an inhabited town to the ground, people would not be able to understand the layout of the upper level, bathed in the different seasons of sunlight and moonlight at every time of the year and day. The play of shadows on the light yellow lime-stone provides tangible proof to what previously was only imaginable.
Introducing artificial lighting in the dark cavernous chambers
Fire was the only means of lighting for most of the past millennia. Although there is no evidence of inbuilt fire lighter cradles in the chambers to hold up fire illumination, the team placed firelight in edifices and behind chambers, using their design skills to identify the points where the amber flames would beautify the architectural structures for the whole complex to look at its very best.
The team introduced a soft ambient light to the model even in areas where firelight was not introduced, otherwise the visitor would not be able to view the darkened areas. The site itself is in pitch darkness — caught in a power cut, it would entrap the visitor into total blindness and disorientation. The developers of the virtual system had to find the right balance to portray the detail, yet offer the right contrast between the illuminated areas and the dark spaces.
Communication the meaning of life and death
The spiral symbolises the continuation of life for the prehistoric man of Malta, shown through representation in various temples and monuments dotting Malta and Gozo, and clearly replicated in decorations of the Hypogeum.
The faint spirals frieze, lovingly painted in red ochre as seen in the video frame below, shows the dedication beyond beautifying this monument through its architectural beauty by our forefathers. The years needed to carve the Hal Saflieni chambers using only bone and stone tools is already a feat that modern man cannot comprehend, and the intricate painting of the symbol of life by our ancestors is clearly evident in this chamber of the Hypogeum.
The Hal Saflieni Hypogeum as a musical instrument
The Hal Saflieni Hypogeum is not only an architectural gem, but was hewn to be a musical instrument. In the innards of the hypogeum a chamber includes a hole in the wall, that amplifies a chanting voice, and the amplification further reverberates throughout the complex. It hits a high level of resonance at a range of low frequencies that, once identified, allows a person to interact with the chamber as if it was a musical instrument.
The chanting is presented in the virtual reality model, and the visitor hears the chanting according to the distance from the source — the oracle chamber. Heritage Malta kindly allowed a recording of the chant in the oracle hole, and through bespoke software written by the department’s staff, we were able to emulate the varying chanting volume depending on the area being visited at the moment.
In the short film, the chanting is integrated in the accompanying musical composition, but in the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum VR experience, the chanting is an integral part of the visitors’ experience that provides visual and aural sensory experiences.
Computing at the very edge of technology
Saint Martin’s Institute of Higher Education introduced undergraduate degree programmes in creative computing in 2006, in conjunction with Goldsmiths College, University of London. The department has grown and developed throughout the years, and gave the opportunity for academics in computing to focus their research at postgraduate studies in this emerging field. Some years back, the Institute developed a portfolio of specialisms at MQF level 5 Diploma and level 6 Degree in Games Design & Development, User Experience, Mixed Media (augmented and virtual reality) and Web Design — offshoots of the Creative Computing research undertaken in the first decade of the millennium.
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