The Influence of the Point Cloud Comparison Methods on the Verification of Point Clouds Using the Batavia Reconstruction as a Case Study

Abstract

The wreck of the VOC ship Batavia (1629) was discovered in 1963 on Morning Reef, in the Wallabi Group of the Houtman Abrolhos Islands. The site was excavated over four seasons in the 1970s. During these seasons, over 3500 underwater photographs were taken of the site by Green and Baker (Green 1989). The project team scanned all of the original 35mm photographs of the Batavia wreck site and applied photogrammetric 3D reconstruction techniques to generate a large selection of detailed 3D models of the in situ ship’s timbers (prior to and during excavation) and the surrounding site. These 3D models provide a realistic depiction of the 3D shape and layout of the site, which can be visualised in full-scale in a virtual environment display such as at the Curtin HIVE (Woods et al. 2020) or a head-mounted display (HMD). Some of the historical photosets had been captured for the purpose of generating a relatively successful 2D hard-copy photomosaic of the area, the only option available at the time. However, photogrammetric 3D reconstruction techniques have allowed a much more detailed and realistic 3D rendering of the area to be generated. A 2D photomosaic assumes a flat site and, therefore, imposes significant distortions on the mosaic, whereas 3D reconstruction produces 3D models, which can allow accurate site measurements to be obtained. This paper discusses the 3D reconstruction processes used, details of a new ‘expanded’ 3D reconstruction technique, and discusses the results concerning the processing of this significant legacy dataset.