• Jamie McLaughlin University of Sheffield

University of Sheffield

Delivery of interactive 3D content is a non-trivial problem for humanities projects. Solutions have variously involved separate client programs, browser plug-ins, and rendering the 3D view on a remote server1. WebGL (Web Graphics Library) is a Javascript API which integrates hardware accelerated 3D graphics natively within the browser. This paper argues that WebGL is not just more convenient and sustainable than prior solutions, but that it has the potential to prompt a conceptual shift in the way virtual worlds and 3D reconstructions are used in the digital humanities.

The genesis for this thinking comes from a virtual world project called Ola Nordmann Goes West. Feedback from this project highlighted a hitherto unrecognised problem; that of 3D interactive environments being functionally and thematically divorced from the wider Web.

In response, we implemented a small portion of the project in WebGL and quickly found that it had other conceptual advantages. A 3D reconstruction is often a mediated outcome of multiple scholarly debates2. WebGL has the unique advantage of providing interactive 3D graphics as an entirely integrated layer of web content, allowing inline consultation of other resources which might justify (or question) the editorial decisions underpinning the 3D environment. Hence we explore the consequences of allowing a 3D visualisation to integrate with other web-based humanities analysis tools.

WebGL lessens the extent to which a virtual world or 3D reconstruction needs to be a final destination for a user. Instead the world can be consulted casually and manipulated fluidly as simply another form of distant reading, alongside more conventional close readings. We argue this is not just a technological luxury; it can allow digital humanists to interpret virtual worlds in fundamentally more sophisticated ways.

1 Dylla, Kimberly, Bernard et al., 2010. "Rome Reborn 2.0: A Case Study of Virtual City Reconstruction Using Procedural Modeling Techniques," in CAA 2009. Making History Interactive. 37th Proceedings of the CAA Conference p. 65

2 "The London Charter for the Computer-Based Visualisation of Cultural Heritage" (2009), <http://www.londoncharter.org/fileadmin/templates/main/docs/london_charter_2_1_en.pdf> p.4

• Jian Xu University of Sheffield,
• Jian Kang Harbin Institute of Technology

University of Sheffield

Industrial corridors in China have a long history, where several cities are connected by roads or railways, making up a banded industrial area with shared economic development goals. Before 1949, China's industry distribution was very fragmented with small manual workshops, whereas according to the statistics in 2014, 87% of the Chinese provinces have one or more industrial corridors. In total there are 51 industrial corridors in China, which are all supported by the government, and most of them were developed after 2000. This paper first reviews the history of industrial corridor development process in China, focusing on their landscape and environmental features. The paper then examines five representative industrial corridors, where digital technologies were used for analysing video-recording at a constant speed of sampled industrial corridors, exploring the landscape and environmental features. A Matlab program was developed to identify various elements, including industry, landscape, and public facilities, through image processing techniques. The results reveal the present situation of the industrial corridors in China. Moreover, a survey was carried out to investigate the public awareness and evaluation on the environment of those industrial corridors, and through an integrated analysis of survey results and the characteristics obtained by digital techniques, relationships among industrial growth, landscape ecology, government policies, and corridor’s landscape and environmental features have been explored.

• Erik Champion Curtin University

Curtin University

This paper evaluates the practical limitations and dramatic possibilities of modding the commercial role-playing game Elder Scrolls: Skyrim for the visualisation and exploration of canonical literature. While many commercial computer games are predominantly based on violence and evasion, Skyrim has some additional features that may interest literature teachers. Skyrim’s Creation Kit natively helps builds game levels for medieval settings (Skyrim) or for modernist settings (Geck: Fallout) but all sorts of virtual environments can be created, even for urban visualisation and tourism. There are seasons and changing weather patterns, a large and varied landscape, hostile creatures, inventories, and various types of possible interaction that are not just typical adventurer violence (praying, healing, reading, tool and material creation and repair skills, persuading and charming, causing fear, creating followers, recognizing and collecting flowers and animal specimens for alchemy experiments, buying and selling, sneaking and thievery, inducing disgust or revulsion, fermenting frenzy and chaotic behaviour, trapping souls, and so on). The Non-Playing Characters have a life of their own, are of different “races” and professions, can detect players, speak dialogue, and can be persuaded charmed or repelled, and all these features are modifiable.

Most relevantly, Skyrim features books that contain minor narratives to advance game-play, they can also be stored and traded. Books can also be modded via the Creation Kit. Librarians and academics (wizard teachers) play an important part in the meta-narratives and minor quests, as does a certain dragon archivist. Can these books be used to convey aspects of literature in a game setting to students and the general public who may lack the initial inclination to read the great classics of literature? Can the game-play either help them to visualise new and engaging aspects of literature; can it induce them to read the original text again? Most importantly, how much effort is required of a mainstream humanities scholar to develop his or her own mods in Skyrim? As it is single player, and requires the use of another application, Steam, is it worth the effort?