An Immersive Virtual Sailing on the 18th-Century Ship Le Boullongne

The work presented in this article is the result of collaboration between historians and computer scientists whose goal was the digital reconstitution of Le Boullongne, an 18th-century merchant ship of La Compagnie des Indes orientales.1 This ship has now disappeared and its reconstitution aims at understanding onboard living conditions. Three distinct research laboratories have participated in this project so far. The first, a department of naval history, worked on historical documents, especially the logbooks describing all traveling events of the ship. The second, a research laboratory in archaeology, archaeoscience, and history, proposed a 3D model of the ship based on the original naval architectural plans. The third, a computer science research laboratory, implemented a simulation of the ship sailing in virtual reality.