Visualization of Ancient Buildings: Virtual Simulation for Online Historical Architecture Learning

Upon the advent of the digital era, digital technology has been applied in many realms within education. As an art of space experience, historical architecture education requires on-spot visiting for ancient buildings to have a comprehensive understanding of their historic value and technology. But this is time-consuming, laborious, and sometimes impossible for non-existent buildings. In this sense, virtual simulation can reconstruct historical scenes, even non-existent buildings, so it has great value for historical architecture learning. However, the current application of virtual simulation in historical architecture education is still in its infancy. Most of the virtual simulation experiments are limited to some specific knowledge topics or structure details, such as Dougong. Therefore, this study attempts to construct an online virtual simulation system including an RPG game program, a website, and a database, to provide students with a comprehensive and intensive learning experience. The study adopts the folk dwellings in southern Fujian, China as the teaching content. The related knowledge is divided into 5 levels and integrated into RPG story plots, interactive games and virtual scenes. In addition, an empirical experiment is carried out and the results show that students all appreciate the application of the system. This study has revealed that the virtual simulation is compatible with historical architecture education compared with traditional ways. It can provide insights also a useful tool for professional education in the digital era.