Towards a 3-D Virtual Victoria
The objective of this project is to create an innovative, feature-rich application that will allow learners to interact in a nineteenth century Canadian city. The prototype for our application is based Victoria, British Columbia, c. 1891. We want to create a three-dimensional "virtual Victoria" by using archival records and digital technologies.
Ultimately, we want to create an immersive environment, where students can explore a Victorian streetscape and identify the people who lived and worked there in 1891. Imagine a kind of historical Sim City, but with real people, not sims! We hope to create this scenario by linking census records and other historical attribute data to our virtual Victoria environment.
The first step is to build a 3 dimensional digital model of the city. For our prototype, we have modelled a block in downtown Victoria, as it looked in May 1891. The model was created with Google SketchUp, using information from historical photographs and fire insurance plans. It was created by Andre Serin at Square Foot Studios, Courtenay, B.C. in 2009.
To download the model, click on The Virtual Block. Users can interact with the model using Google SketchUp Viewer.
This project was funded by an Image, Text, Sound & Technology grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [SSHRC]. The principal investigator for the project was Dr. Kevin Kee, Canada Research Chair in Digital Humanities and Associate Professor of History, at Brock University. Dr. Patrick A. Dunae (Department of History, Vancouver Island University) and Dr. John S. Lutz (Department of History, University of Victoria) were co-researchers and project co-ordinators.
Virtual Victoria is part of a larger scholarly initiative called the Simulating History Project: Best Practices for History Simulations. Funded by SSHRC, the Simulating History Project is concerned with the best ways of using educational computer simulations (sometimes called computer “serious games”) to teach Canadian history.