the scene is set-up for camera tracking preprocessing; consequently the laptop is put in the backpack for the run phase.

(right) Lab ‘maquette’ controlled AR tests. For optimum flexibility and tests the camera is detached from the HMD and

moved freely within the ‘tracked area’ augmenting it with virtual characters (laptop monitor)

Fig. 7. The Mobile AR-Life simulator system on the actual site of Pompeii

6 DISCUSSION AND FUTURE WORK

From the end-user point of view, the benefits of the described approach are significant. He/she

can view a superposition of the real world with a virtual scene representing fully simulated living

characters in real-time. As we are able to occlude with real objects the virtual augmentations,

we can therefore enforce the sensation of presence by generating believable behaviors and

interaction between the real and virtual objects. However, someone could argue that no ‘parthenogenesis‘

in the Mixed reality algorithmic field is exhibited by this study; our premise is that,

as shown in Section 2, fully simulated (animated and deformed in real-time) virtual human actors

have not yet appeared so far in real-time Augmented Reality providing a complete, mobilewearable,

integrated methodology that can be re-applied on multiple AR contexts with a markerless

tracked camera in real-time. Our key contribution has been into providing an exciting integrated

methodology-application for AR with incremental research and extensions in the ‘AR

Enabling technologies’ (Azuma et al 2001). Finally, there are a number of issues that need to be

further improved as future work. For example the illumination registration issue is still not yet

addressed which will help for rendering more realistic the MR experience and we are currently

experimenting with HDRI. The real-time camera tracking performance can be further improved

as well as the training process to be further shortened. Currently if the lighting conditions on the

real scene are altered, the system has to be retrained and a new database to be generated. In the

virtual human simulation domain, an important aspect that we will be addressing in the future is

interactivity between the real users and virtual actors.

7 CONCLUSION

Nowadays, when laymen visit some cultural heritage site, generally, they cannot fully grasp the

ancient vibrant life that used to be integrated in the present ancient ruins. This is particularly

true with ruins such as the ancient city of Pompeii, where we would like to observe and understand

the behaviors and social patterns of living people from ancient Roman times, superimposed