LAVA Hosts Mid Pacific High School LiDAR Showcase of Historical Hawaiʻian Site

The Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) worked with Mid Pacific High School to showcase their students’ LiDAR scans of Kaniakapupu ruins – the summer palace of King Kamehameha III.

The centerpiece of the showcase was a life-sized stereoscopic 3D virtual reality walkthrough of the historical site using LAVA’s 20-foot, 2x4K resolution CyberCANOE (the Cyber-enabled Collaboration Analysis Navigation and Observation Environment). The demonstration was created through a collaboration between Mid Pacific students and LAVA Master’s student, Eric Wu.

Students also showed 360-degree images of the site that were taken with a 360-degree GoPro camera system. Viewers were able to see the location in full 360 degree surround using Samsung Gear Virtual Reality headsets.

The LiDAR scanner and 360-degree camera were donated by the CyArk Foundation and GoPro. This work was also partially funded by a National Science Foundation project entitled “Development of the Sensor Environment Imaging (SENSEI) Instrument”  to build the SENSEI (SENSor Environment Imaging) instrument that will capture still and motion, 3D full-sphere omnidirectional stereoscopic video and images of real-world scenes, to be viewed in collaboration-enabled, nationally networked, 3D virtual-reality systems. Additional funding for supporting the CyberCANOE was provided by the Academy for Creative Media System at the University of Hawaiʻi.

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