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Although Jerusalem is one of the most photographed places in the world, few works have focused on the existence of its former 800-year-old Maghrebi Quarter, located in the shadow of the Western Wall. Founded in 1193 by Saladin's son, al-Afdal Ali to house Muslim pilgrims from North Africa (today Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya), the Quarter was razed by Israeli bulldozers on the night of 10-11 June 1967. Its 1,000 or so inhabitants were forced to flee within hours. Silenced by the occupation of East Jerusalem as part of the Six-Day War, the existence of the Maghrebi Quarter faded behind the walls of history. This research paper describes how 55 years after its razing, the selection of a corpus of archives, combined with 3D technology and Interprofessional collaborations between historians and 3D designers enable making a forgotten history accessible again. Beyond a discussion on methods and technical process, this research paper aims to highlight the potential applications of the data set and the 3D model not only for scholarly research but also for pedagogical purposes, for instance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decades, the popularity of video games has been increasing thanks to their unique ability to engage their audience and create empathy. Among them, serious games have additional purposes besides entertainment, such as learning and behaviour change. Serious games, in fact, have been successfully applied to different fields, including education, health, tourism, and cultural heritage. In this context, the paper describes a novel serious game developed for increasing awareness and promoting the Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH). In particular, the paper focuses on the Dive in the Past Serious Game which allows users to simulate a virtual dive into the Mediterranean Sea to explore accurate and life-sized 3D reconstructions of underwater archaeological sites. The purpose of the game is twofold: to engage diver and non-diver tourists into a virtual interactive exploration of underwater sites through digital storytelling and challenges; to increase awareness and knowledge on Mediterranean UCH. This work has been carried out in the context of the MeDryDive project, an EU co-funded under the COSME Programme, which aims to create personalized dry dive experiences for the promotion of Mediterranean UCH sites as distinctive tourism destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the i-MareCulture and Lab4Dive projects, an international partnership is developing different technologies for both in-situ and virtual underwater exploration. In particular, an underwater tablet dedicated to the archaeological sites is being developed to improve the recreational diving experience and support the research activities conducted by the archaeological divers. This tablet allows the diver to recognize his position in the underwater site, to acquire geo-localized photos and notes and to visualize the hypothetical reconstruction of the underwater remains through the augmented reality. In addition, it has been realized a virtual diving application that enables every user to explore some different underwater archaeological sites of the Mediterranean Sea without the need to conduct a proper dive. This virtual visit can be enjoyed by means of different Head Mounted Displays (HMDs), such as the HTC Vive, the Samsung Gear VR or the Google Daydream, exploiting the features of these devices to interact with the virtual environment. During the visit, additional information can be obtained playing some videos realized with the typical approach of the storytelling and a 360° field of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underwater images usually suffer from poor visibility, lack of contrast and colour casting, mainly due to light absorption and scattering. In literature, there are many algorithms aimed to enhance the quality of underwater images through different approaches. Our purpose was to identify an algorithm that performs well in different environmental conditions. We have selected some algorithms from the state of the art and we have employed them to enhance a dataset of images produced in various underwater sites, representing different environmental and illumination conditions. These enhanced images have been evaluated through some quantitative metrics. By analysing the results of these metrics, we tried to understand which of the selected algorithms performed better than the others. Another purpose of our research was to establish if a quantitative metric was enough to judge the behaviour of an underwater image enhancement algorithm. We aim to demonstrate that, even if the metrics can provide an indicative estimation of image quality, they could lead to inconsistent or erroneous evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a combined subjective and objective evaluation of an application mixing interactive virtual reality (VR) experience with 360° storytelling. The hypothesis that the modern immersive archaeological VR application presenting cultural heritage from a submerged site would sustain high levels of presence, immersion, and general engagement was leveraged in the investigation of the user experience with both the subjective (questionnaires) and the objective (neurophysiological recording of the brain signals using electroencephalography (EEG)) evaluation methods. Participants rated the VR experience positively in the questionnaire scales for presence, immersion, and subjective judgement. High positive rating concerned also the psychological states linked to the experience (engagement, emotions, and the state of flow), and the experience was mostly free from difficulties linked to the accustomization to the VR technology (technology adoption to the head-mounted display and controllers, VR sickness). EEG results are in line with past studies examining brain responses to virtual experiences, while new results in the beta band suggest that EEG is a viable tool for future studies of presence and immersion in VR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]