Visual media for Cultural Heritage: an opportunity for assessing, finding limitations and enhancing technologies

Digital technologies are now mature for producing high quality digital replicas of Cultural Heritage (CH) artifacts. The research results produced in the last two decades have shown an impressive evolution and consolidation of the technologies for acquiring high-quality digital 3D models, encompassing both geometry and color (or, better, surface reflectance properties); technologies for the interactive visualisation of complex models and the integration of different media have been also an important subject of research. In this talk, I will present the more recent progresses, focusing on practical solutions which aim at a major impact in real applications. The talk will also try to give a glance into the near future, demonstrating how geometry processing and visualization could become a major instrument in the study and dissemination of our cultural heritage.