Skip to main content

A Virtual Tour of Ancient Rome, Circa 320 CE: Explore Stunning Recreations of The Forum, Colosseum and Other Monuments

If you’re a regular reader of this site, you’re likely familiar with the simulation hypothesis, the idea that conscious experience is nothing more than a computer program. This concept has many sci-fi implications, from Matrix-like scenarios to the radical idea that everything in the universe is software, run by incomprehensible beings who might as well be gods. One of the more plausible versions suggests that we are living in an “ancestor simulation,” designed by future human societies to recreate their past.

Presumably, simulated ancestors would create their own ancestor simulations and so on, ad infinitum. There’s no way to know where on the continuum we fall, but wherever it is, ancestor simulations are on the way… maybe. They’re rudimentary at the moment, consisting of immersive video games and VR recreations of ancient cities.

Each iteration, however, is better than the last, as we have seen in the case of Rome Reborn (or Rome Reborn®), a 3D digital modeling project designed to recreate the city’s architecture as it was in 320 CE, through expert renderings informed by architectural historians and "virtual archaeologists" like Dr. Bernard Frischer, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia.

Back in a 2012 Open Culture post, Matthias Rascher explained the significance of this year, “when Rome’s population had reached its peak (about one million) and the first Christian churches were being built.” Historians will also recognize 320 as following directly on the heels of the Donation of Constantine that gave the city to the Pope. We can tour the virtual streets of this rapidly changing ancient city, though the burgeoning population is nowhere in evidence. Nothing moves, grows, or changes in Rome Reborn. In that sense it is still like so many previous representations of antiquity.

Now in version 3.0, Rome Reborn began as a 3D model in 2007, and was first owned by the Regents of the University of California. It now operates, under the auspices of the University of Virginia, as a private company called Flyover Zone. They have other such digital recreations in their product line, including “Athens Reborn®, Hadrian's Villa Reborn®, Baalbek Reborn®, Egypt Reborn®, and Historical Games®.” Rome Reborn’s designer, Danila Loginov, has released increasingly detailed promos of the project over the years, and you can see these many videos here.

To fully experience this simulated Rome, you’ll need a Virtual Reality headset. The third version of the 3D model has been made publicly available. “You can immerse yourself in the ancient city and even enter into some of its most famous buildings while listening to the commentary of highly qualified experts,” the Rome Reborn site promises. Famous buildings one might explore include the Roman forum and the Basilica of Maxentius. It is not an experience based in realism. In some of the simulations “you can opt for a whirlwind  flyover tour of the city,” notes Meilan Solly at Smithsonian.

This roughly two-hour tour is like nothing any ancient Roman ever experienced. “Comparatively, the two site visits place users in the driver’s seat,” Solly writes, “affording them freedom to roam through reconstructed streets and halls.” It’s not quite the stuff of a simulated universe just yet, but it may not be too far in the future before Rome Reborn® fully lives up to its name. Learn more about ancient Rome, circa 320 CE, in the videos here, and learn more about Rome Reborn at their official site.

Related Content:

Rome Reborn: Take a Virtual Tour of Ancient Rome, Circa 320 C.E.

Rome Reborn – An Amazing Digital Model of Ancient Rome

Animation Gives You a Glimpse of What Life Was Like for Teenagers in Ancient Rome

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

 

A Virtual Tour of Ancient Rome, Circa 320 CE: Explore Stunning Recreations of The Forum, Colosseum and Other Monuments is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.



from Open Culture https://ift.tt/2XsloTi
via Ilumina

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When Albert Einstein & Charlie Chaplin Met and Became Fast Famous Friends (1930)

Photo via Wikimedia Commons “You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother,” goes a well-known quote attributed variously to Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and Ernest Rutherford. No matter who said it, “the sentiment… rings true,” writes Michelle Lavery , “for researchers in all disciplines from particle physics to ecopsychology.” As Feynman discovered during his many years of teaching , it could be “the motto of all professional communicators,” The Guardian ’s Russell Grossman writes , “and especially those who earn a living communicating the tricky business of science.” Einstein became one of the world’s great science communicators by choice, not necessity, and found ways to explain his complex theories to children and the elderly alike. But perhaps, if he’d had his way, he would rather have avoided words altogether, and preferred acrobatic feats of silent daring to get his message across. We might at least conclude so from his reverence f...
Post a Comment
Read more

1,100 Delicate Drawings of Root Systems Reveals the Hidden World of Plants

We know that plants can inspire art. If you, personally, still require convincing on that point, just have a look at Elizabeth Twining’s Illustrations of the Natural Orders of Plants , the drawings of Ernst Heinrich Haeckel , Elizabeth Blackwell’s  A Curious Herbal , and Nancy Anne Kingsbury Wollstonecraft’s Specimens of the Plants and Fruits of the Island of Cuba — not to mention the paintings of Georgia O’ Keeffe — all previously featured here on Open Culture. But those works concern themselves only with plant life as it exists above ground. What goes on down below, underneath the soil? That you can see for yourself — and without having to pull up one of our fine flowering (or non-flowering) friends to do so — at Wageningen University’s online archive of root system drawings . “The outcome of 40 years of  root system excavations in Europe,” says that site, the collection contains 1,180 diagrams of species from  Abies alba (best known today as a kind of Christmas t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zamrock: An Introduction to Zambia’s 1970s Rich & Psychedelic Rock Scene

The story of popular music in the late 20th century is never complete without an account of the explosive psychedelic rock, funk, Afrobeat, and other hybrid styles that proliferated on the African continent and across Latin American and the Caribbean in the 1960s and 70s. It’s only lately, however, that large audiences are discovering how much pioneering music came out of Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, and other postcolonial countries, thanks to UK labels like Strut and Soundway (named by The Guardian as “one of the 10 British Labels defining the sound of 2014” and named “Label of the Year” in 2017). Germany’s Analogue Africa , a label that reissues classic albums from the era, puts it this way: “the future of music happened decades ago.” Only most Western audiences weren’t paying attention—with notable exceptions, of course: superstar drummer Ginger Baker apprenticed himself to Fela Kuti and became an evangelist for African drumming; Brian Eno and Talking Heads’ David Byrne ( who ...
Post a Comment
Read more