A simulation of life in a medieval town for edutainment and touristic promotion

Using new technological capabilities to reconstruct a virtual interactive town dramatically increases the possibilities of information exchange and diffusion. The MediaEvo Project aims to develop a multi-channel and multi-sensory platform for edutainment in cultural heritage for the realization of a digital didactic game oriented towards knowledge of medieval history and society by means of the integration of human sciences and data processing technologies. It deals with historical findings, geomorphological inquiries, data management systems and the definition of a virtual immersive platform for playing and educating. This paper introduces the theoretical questions related to the educational use of Virtual Reality technology and describes the steps in the reconstruction of the town of Otranto in the Middle Ages: data collection and integration, organization of work, peripherals and software applications. During its definition, the platform that has been planned for educational purposes has proved to be useful for testing researchers' hypotheses about the ancient town and its everyday life. At the end of project, other research fields have been tested on the game: new peripherals for motion and interaction, virtual treasure hunts, Augmented Reality and evaluation studies for territorial marketing and tourism.