VISUAL CROSS-EXAMINATION OF ARCHITECTURAL AND ACOUSTIC DATA: THE 3D INTEGRATOR EXPERIMENT

Abstract. This paper presents an online application called 3D integrator enabling visual cross-examinations of architectural and acoustic data on web browsers, and explains the rationale behind its development. The tool consists of a series of overlays developed over the Potree 3D point cloud renderer. The 3D integrator is used to display visually, in an interactive environment, the 3D point clouds resulting from a survey protocol tailored to the specific needs of the corpus under scrutiny – fifteen small scale edifices often referred to as “minor heritage assets - and to the research’s overall ambition, co-reasoning on architectural and acoustic features at an interdisciplinary level. One of the tool’s distinctive features is to project abstract information (acoustic indicators) in a “close to real” 3D space (point clouds), hence merging scientific visualisation and information visualisation practices. The paper shortly sums up the particularities of the survey protocol, and discusses in detail the implementation of the analytical add-ons that have been introduced (visual trace of the survey protocol itself, exploitation of panoramas, volume calculation, and exploratory 3D representation of acoustic indicators). Finally, early uses of the tool are summarised and the services it actually offers at this stage are commented.