Virtual Reality for Cultural Heritage: New Levels of Computer-Generated Simulation of a Unesco World Heritage Site

This research proposes a generative method capable of improving the interoperability levels of HBIM models for the generation of immersive environments based on the main game engines such as Unreal Engine. Thanks to advanced modelling techniques based on Non-Uniform Rational Basis-Splines (NURBS) algorithms, able to faithfully represent the surveyed artefact and an open-source visual scripting language for gameplay (blueprint for game engine), it was possible to develop an implementable VR project of one of the most representative Unesco World Heritage Site of Lombard architecture: Santa Maria Delle Grazie in Milan (Italy), according to the Cloister of dead part. In particular, thanks to HBIM and VR integration, the proposed method brings to light the intangible values of the historical monument, handing down the historical phases and the memory to future generations that have followed over the centuries from the first construction of the convent complex, to the reconstruction that took place after the bombing of the Second World War. Users, through an immersive path, can discover the transformations that took place over the centuries, which are gradually going slowly lost in our common memory. The virtual interactive reconstruction concerns the project carried out and then demolished of the access to the convent from via Sassi and the transformations linked to the Cloister of the dead before and after the bombing of 1943. Thanks to new levels of interactivity and state-of-the-art technologies, the VR project in Santa Maria Delle Grazie, which is being developed for different devices and platforms (mobile, desktop and Oculus Rift), aims to increase historical and cultural awareness of different types of users such as professionals in the construction sector and virtual tourists, thus becoming a useful dissemination tool for in-depth research carried out in recent years.