Virtual reconstruction of the Red Room exhibition

Museums increasingly use interactive installations to enhance exhibitions with additional content. Virtual reality can give the visitor access to remote places and bring the past back to life. This is especially interesting when artifacts cannot be brought back since they were sold or otherwise lost. In this project, we have partially reconstructed the Giech’s family exhibition in the Red Room of Thurnau Castle. The exhibition ended when the family had to sell the exhibits in the 19th century because of financial problems. The goal of the project is to fully reconstruct the part of the exhibition that was shown in the Red Room based on a painting and the list of artifacts. While museums explain exhibits using information boards, the visitor of the Giech’s family exhibition would have been guided by the earl himself. Therefore, we used virtual reality interaction techniques to make the exhibition more immersive and accessible. • An immersive virtual exhibition using audio clips triggered by touching the exhibits. • Visually fully integrated exhibits including soft shadows and inter-reflections. • Simultaneous estimation of lights and reflection properties during 3D reconstruction. • Presentation in virtual reality, on desktop computers or mobile devices.