Visualization of archaeological sites such as Sagalassos is particularly challenging because:

Large and complex scenes: The site is huge but it needs to be described down to a very fine detail due to the wide-ranging sizes of some of the finds. This leads to an enormous amount of data that surpasses the capabilities of current graphics hardware by an order of magnitude.

Different user, application and hardware profiles: The system should be usable for an expert archaeologist as well as for the broader public (e.g. visitors of exhibitions and museums). The system should run on non-specialized computers connected by the Internet (Internet clients) and also on specific graphics hardware available in research labs and exhibition sites. Furthermore the proposed common database should be the basis for all these application and hardware settings.

Time dependent data: Archaeological data should not be visualised through a static representation of items. Finds have to be represented over a large historical time span where most of the objects have been moved around and have different creation dates. Techniques need to be developed to swiftly visualise the site so that people can virtually navigate through on a standalone high quality site visualisation system and an Internet visualisation system. This will call for special measures, such as level-of-detail selection, predicting the next views, exploiting our reduced visual resolution when moving, etc. The visual experience will also include replays of the excavations, showing the different layers of the excavations being 'peeled off' one by one. This will help future archaeologists revisit the site in virtual reality in order to make their own interpretation of the finds.