terms. The projection screen will become a dy-
namic big board to display comments posted by
the participants, which can be rearranged by the
expert as the debate goes on. At any time, the ex-
pert will be able to choose multimedia contents to
illustrate the different points that are raised.
In this paper, we firstly present the details of the
REENACT proposal (Section 2) and its implementa-
tion (Section 3). Then, we describe our experimen-
tation plans (Section 4), taking a look at some of the
indicators we will be measuring to assess the value
of the proposal for different stakeholders, in terms of
Quality of Experience (QoE) and Quality of Commu-
nity (QoC). Conclusions are given in Section 5.
2 THE REENACT APPROACH
We will look into the three stages of the REENACT
approach by borrowing examples from the specific
scenario of the Battle of Thermopylae, which is the
first event we will experiment with. This eventis quite
popular as a symbol of courage against overwhelming
odds, but it is not really well understood due to non-
rigorous treatment in movies and comics. Fortunately,
the details reported by Herodotus (Herodotus (author)
and A. D. Godley (translator), 1922) and other histo-
rians provide sufficient scenes to yield both a didactic
and enlightening experience to explain such facts as
the advantages of training, equipment and good use
of terrain as force multipliers. These are some of the
points to highlight during the experiences.
2.1 Details of the Reenactment Stage
Once a sufficient group of people has been formed to
participate in a REENACT experience about a given
battle or war, they will be taken to a room where they
will first watch a brief projection explaining the his-
torical context of the conflict. Then, they will be
armed with their tactile mobile devices and assume
a given role in the battle, fighting for whichever side.
The tactile mobile devices will be providing the
participants with the actions they may make at any
given moment: to advance on a certain stand, to re-
treat, to fight one way or another, to surrender or not,
etc. The choice of possible actions will be a function
of each individual’s choices, the orders delivered by
the respective commanders or decisions made collec-
tively by voting. The options appear on the top half of
the mobile devices’screens, along with links to pieces
of content that explain the current state of things (see
Fig. 1).
Some of the reenactors’ actions will require them
to move around the room, seeking different zones
identified by 2D codes on the floor or on the walls.
The mobile devices help identify the zones by aug-
menting the world seen through the cameras with rep-
resentative 3D models, as shown in Fig. 2.
The zones correspond to locations that are dis-
played on the maps of the bottom half of the devices’
screens (see Fig. 1). This way, each participant will
be able to visualise his/her position in the scenario of
the battle, where the rest of the people will be charac-
terised as per their roles. In the case of the Battle of
Thermopylae, the zones are arranged into three differ-
ent scenes:
• The first scene (appearing on the left of Fig. 1)
situates the main locations during the prelude of
the battle: Asia Minor, the Hellespont, Thessaly,
Phocis, Thebes, Corinth, Arcadia and Sparta.
• The second scene (appearing on the right of
Fig. 1) displays the relevant locations during the
course of the fights in the Thermopylae area: the
Persian camp, the Greek camp, the old Phocian
wall, the Anopaean path and the Greek rearguard.
These locations can appear either on a satellite
view of the area (as seen nowadays) or on an an-
cient historical map overlaid on it, which helps the
user understand how the area has changed over the
centuries due to a process of sedimentary deposi-
tion that has moved the coastline far apart from
the mountains.
• The third scene displays three afterlife locations
to host participants whose characters die during
the reenactment: the Elysium (Greek heaven), the
Tartarus (Greek underworld) and the Garothman
(Zoroastrianism heaven).
Another feature of augmented reality to enhance
the immersion is the provision of 360
◦
views of some
zones, including the Greek and Persian camps at
Thermopylae. One snapshot of the former is shown
in Fig. 3.
Augmented reality is also used when it comes to
battling. One-on-one fights can be easily simulated
by having two reenactors (one from each side) move
2D codes around the surface of a table, interpreting
moves forward and backwards as attack and defense
gestures, respectively. The screens will be display-
ing a fight between 3D models accordingly. Simple
logical puzzles (adapted from Simon Tatham’s collec-
tion
1
) will also be offered to fill dead times waiting for
other reenactors’ decisions or actions.
Finally, to enhance the feeling of a collective
experience, one laptop can be put to use any big
1
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/˜sgtatham/puzzles/
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