The fast development of interactive technologies has impacted the field of Cultural Heritage by enriching museums, sites and exhibitions. As for Cultural Heritage, Industrial Heritage can also benefit from new technologies in order to create interactive experiences and advance the understanding and dissemination of industrial evolution.

The thermal power plant of Aramon at the South of France has stopped its electricity production and will be dismantled. With the collaboration of EDF (Electricité de France, historical French energy operator) and the Campus des Métiers et des Qualifications (network bringing together the worlds of education, economy and research in the same territory) we started the 3D modeling of the power plant. A 3D model of the site supporting virtual tours would make possible, on the one hand, to create resources for educational purposes in order to introduce the public to energy production sites and, on the other hand, to keep the memory of the region's Industrial Heritage.

The plant's 3D model was made in 2020 by a group of students (Abdellah Choukri, Anas Chetouan, Marco Di Marino et Smaail Hennani) of the Master in Computer Science of the University of Montpellier (France). It was produced in Unity, a game engine allowing to create and manage interactive virtual environments. Unity offers several functionalities such as a physics engine, a mechanism to build animations and the possibility to easily integrate interaction devices.

To enter the virtual environment click here

→ Rodriguez, N. (2021). Virtual Reality for Industrial Heritage: The Thermal Power Plant of Aramon. In: Stephanidis, C., Antona, M., Ntoa, S. (eds) HCI International 2021 - Posters. HCII 2021. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1420. Springer, Cham. read more