Evaluating artificial life-based vegetation dynamics in the context of a virtual reality representation of ancient landscapes

Virtual Reality as applied to heritage representation has become an important technological development in the support of education, site/artefact preservation and investigative research for the 21st century. VR technology, coupled with Artificial Life, an emerging field in science, promises to enhance these areas of endeavour even further by introducing an element of naturalistic dynamics and historical realism into an otherwise “sterile” and unengaging 3D reconstruction. Our evaluation of the merits of introducing Artificial Life-based software of simulated complex adaptive systems (focusing on the generation of plant life) has shown viability in that vegetation dynamics and behaviour can, using additional knowledge from subject matter experts in other scientific fields (geography, geology, archaeology), reproduce a credible historical representation of an ancient landscape, in this case the Mesolithic basin of the North Sea.