Making of a virtual world of Heijokyo from historical knowledge

We developed a walkthrough application that reproduced the ancient Japanese capital city "Heijokyo" on PC-based virtual reality system. We describe the making of that virtual city. To create the huge and complex city model, we introduce a systematic method in which the objects are arranged in accordance with the historical knowledge in a database. Since the virtual city is consistent with the current map of Nara city, the transition between scenes of the virtual city and the current actual city can be displayed in a seamless way.