The site of Nag el-Hamdulab in 360°: an alternative way to experience a story from the past

The digital era in the field of cultural heritage, including archaeology, has finally reached a mature stage, with better identified research questions, and the capacity to address and fulfil the needs and goals of the various sub-disciplines. Technological achievements, together with preservation issues and the need to disseminate results, have driven the development of exciting new systems for sharing knowledge with people all over the world. At the same time, this trend is producing an increasingly large amount of data that present ongoing challenges for effective management and storage, especially for the growing volume of 3D contents. Nowadays it is quite simple to produce graphically appealing layouts that are geometrically accurate and photorealistic, but remain difficult to keep them organised and graphically connected with all the related types of information. In this article we present our experience, with the Aswan – Kom Ombo Archaeological Project, in turning an important rock art site, Nag el-Hamdulab, into a complete and accessible interactive Virtual Reality Tour based on 360° photography (VRT360). This work mostly carried out using Virtual Tour Pro (VTP), a software by 3D Vista, provides an excellent case study in how to integrate 3D spatial data with a range of other types of site data, in a way that makes it easily and efficiently reachable to many stakeholders.