A Lost Castle Revived...

In months of work, a team of the WSI/GRIS at the University of Tuebingen, Germany has revived the the "Friedrichsburg" Castle, Hechingen (Germany) - in virtual reality. The Renaissance Castle "Friedrichsburg", built from 1577 to 1591, fell into ruins in the 19th century and was finally replaced by a new castle in 1818.

In close cooperation with the director of the "Hohenzollerisches Landesmuseum" museum in Hechingen, Dr. Schmidt-Lawrence, and funded by the Landesstiftung Badenwuerttemberg foundation, the computer scientists R. Kuchar and T. Schairer reconstructed the castle, its interior and surroundings. The necessary information was mainly deduced from copper engravings by the artist Matthaeus Merian, old paintings and written testimony. Studying well preserved interiors of the same epoch like the Knight's Hall in Heiligenberg, Germany was helpfull guidance for redesigning the rooms of the castle.

The 3D construction and visualization was completely performed in PYTHA. The result is an exhibit in the Hohenzollerischen Landesmuseum museum in Hechingen, Germany. Visitors can interactively walk through the castle with an adapted version of the RadioLab Viewer RadioShow and a touchscreen. The photorealistic rendering of the current view is created in realtime and projected to a screen, visible for all visitors.

After the reconstruction of the Villa-Rustica, this is the second archeologic reconstruction performed with PYTHA, that is exhibited in a museum.

PYTHA RadioLab Rendering of the Knight's Hall, Friedrichsburg Castle