This paper presents a novel spatial instruction system for improving spatial abilities of engineering students. A 3D mobile game application called Virtual Blocks has been designed to provide a 3D virtual environment to build models with cubes that help students to perform visualization tasks to promote the development of their spatial ability during a short remedial course. A validation study with 26 freshman engineering students at La Laguna University (Spain) has concluded that the training had a measurable and positive impact on students' spatial ability. In addition, the results obtained using a satisfaction questionnaire show that Virtual Blocks is considered an easy to use and stimulating application.
The use of 3D visualization technologies offers a unique opportunity to reconstruct historical cities that no longer exist or have been substantially modified. In this paper, we use the oldest preserved map of the city of San Cristóbal de La Laguna, created in 1588 by the engineer Leonardo Torriani, as the basis for its 3D virtual recreation. This map shows the first non-fortified Spanish colonial city whose plan provided a model for the colonial cities in America. These distinct features made San Cristóbal de La Laguna a UNESCO world heritage site. In our work, we present a map-based workflow for 3D reconstruction that balances fidelity to the original map with the integration of other historical sources and the current status of the city. This leads to the development of several 3D models from those distinct sources whose integration provides the 3D reconstruction of the city in the 16th century. The results of this project can be applied to other similar maps that were created in Europe at that time.
Museums have been the main centers for the dissemination of cultural heritage throughout history. In recent years, they have been increasingly digitizing their content, so that it is now common for each museum to have free digital content available on the Web. This can be photographs of the works with detailed information or even objects created in three dimensions. It is also common to find virtual museums, which might be a representation of an existing museum that has been digitized or a museum created only in digital format. This paper describes the creation of a virtual museum of Spanish clothing from the 16th century, one that exists only in digital format, accessible from a computer or digital tablet. In order to create the museum, various documentation and drawings or pictures of the clothing of that time were studied. The costumes were then created in a specialized 3D costume-modeling program called Marvelous Designer. A 3D model of the exhibition hall was created in Blender, and finally, everything was assembled in the Unity videogame engine, where the interactive part was also added, allowing the virtual visitors to walk through the hall as if they were visiting a real museum.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.