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‘Rome Reborn’ in 3D VR for scholars
June 11, 2007 | 2:51 pm
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By David Rothman
“How do you say megabyte in Latin? Ancient Rome was reborn—as a virtual city—today, when a team of American and Italian academics unveiled Rome Reborn, a real-time 3-D computer reconstruction that allows visitors to navigate the ancient city as if it were 320 A.D. again. Thanks to the complex software run on PCs, modern visitors can fly over the ancient city, pan down into the Colosseum, cruise the Roman Forum and stroll into the Senate building.” – Newsweek.
The TeleRead take: The ten-year, $2M project, alas, lacks a business plan to provide for sufficient server-load capacity, so the best you can do is enjoy the videos—while hoping that the whole works can show up someday in a Second Life-ish area. Of course, this is as good an argument as any for standards to facilitate such portings and for scholars and others to build their worlds in public areas, ideally not just owned by individual corporations.
I continue to worry about libraries, foundations and others eventually diverting precious resources from books and other texts to VR. But if it’s to be done, it needs to be done efficiently and with maximum benefit to the public. With combined resources, the burden shouldn’t be as heavy.
And the scholars have chosen an excellent virtual subject, given the importance of local geography in literature, including the classical variety. Theoretically—maybe this is already happening—you could click on a geographical area within the VR worlds and see relevant passages from great works. Or in the other direction, you could take a tour keyed to, say, the poetry of Virgil.
A theater-style project in California will commercial the work here, but I’d hope that someday it could be coming to a PC near you—ideally the one two feet away.
Related: Science Daily article and other stories via Google News.
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Comments:
This is something I have often wished the people who produce games could do – produce some “virtual world” tours of ancient cities (or even not so ancient – say London in Sherlock Holmes’ time or New York in the 1900′s). There is nothing like being there to make history come alive. Of course, funding is the big thing, but wouldn’t it be good to see Sony or Microsoft divert a million or so from their game sales profits to a worthwhile cause. Come to think of it, if they did such a reconstruction this might undo some anger in the latest row over Sony using a certain cathedral (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/manchester/6736809.stm) for a violent game.
Hi Having just come back from Italy (Florence in particular but I did spend some time again in Rome) I was quite excited when I learned about this on CNN. However, I must have missed something because I was expecting to be able to access this on my computer and I gather this is not possible. What a bummer! If this can be accessed at home, PLEASE send me the link! I would really love to be able to ramble around virtually in ancient Rome. I did go to Pompeii while I was away but would be able to spend a heck of a lot more time in ancient Rome on my computer than the tour guide allowed in Pompeii.
Hi, Elizabeth. Would that I had a link to give out! Ideally, a way will be found for the public to be able to wonder around. Catch up with the people involved with the project. Here’s hoping… Thanks. David
Why not release this on DVD-ROM for the public? I don’t understand why so much work goes into these VR reconstructions (such as Shadows of Canaveral) and yet they are sealed away at the special collections department of a university, accessible by only a few of the privileged elite. Research papers are available at the libraries–why are they so protective of this data? In the early ’90s there was a drive to make the world’s knowledge available on CD-ROM for the public. Now it’s protected and proprietary, with only samples on web sites, waiting to be taken down in a year, and nobody seems to care.
Why can’t anyone answer the above question? As someone who is fascinated by ancient civilization and architectire, how can I get a copy? If I can’t, what is the reason?