
Fly over a reconstruction of 4th century Rome [video] - gruseom
https://smarthistory.org/ancient-rome/
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x3ro
I have trouble understanding why people here say "the modeling is bad" (I
think what is really meant is the level of detail).

If this is meant to be an "as realistic as possible" representation of ancient
Rome, then the level of detail is linked to our knowledge of what specific
buildings may have looked like back then. That's why eg some of the statues
have a very high LOD because they were preserved until today.

Now, comparing this against a multi-hundred-million budget for-profit video
game seems a bit pointless, because in a video game (apart from time and money
invested) there's no need for historical accuracy. But if we assume that
standards of scientific accuracy apply to this visualization, then it makes a
lot of sense that they didn't just invent a bunch of details. Imagine them
publishing a paper and just filling some historical gaps with "this is how we
think it might've looked"..

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virtualritz
You can create most of the details using procedural modeling, automatically.
We also know enough about the actual detailing of the buildings to create much
more detailed representation of Rome than we see in this video.

See e.g.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx_8RbFNjes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx_8RbFNjes)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=necqGAYknIY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=necqGAYknIY)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dxQbqVB7iU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dxQbqVB7iU)

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flexie
I love this.

Nitpick: Rome was a city with a population of up to 1 million people plus
millions of animals. We see a few plumes of smoke coming up from bath
complexes, but that would just have been a few of thousands. Even if this was
in the middle of day in the middle of summer, we should expect to see plumes
of smoke coming up from tens of thousands of fireplaces. How else would they
cook, bake bread etc. This was a very dense city, so I would expect to see
haze over Rome even at noon in July. I would also expect to see soot on all
the buildings and dirt in the streets.

I know this is just a model, but it leaves you with the impression that
everything was white and clean, which sort of plays well with the thought of
Rome as an advanced civilization that gave us a lot of our concepts and ideas
for government and law. But it likely wasn't that pristine. It was probably a
dirty, stinky, smoke filled, decease ridden place.

But still a wonderful model. I wish we had had these kinds of videos, when we
sat through history classes.

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simen
I mean, it's clearly a very abstract representation based on archaeological
data. There's no people or animals in the streets, which wouldn't have been
the case even at night let alone midday, and all the houses except the famous
landmarks are basic geometric boxes. It's not intended to be a video-game like
living city, but rather a semi-immersive virtual museum.

What you're asking for would have required an entirely different budget and
likely would run counter to the point of the model. It's not a simulation.

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flexie
Agreed and its very good without. I only mentioned it because they already put
smoke from different temples/ baths :-)

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robbbbbbbbbbbb
Something seemed fishy about this as soon as I started reading the About page.
A little digging turned up this great bit of reporting from HyperAllergic from
January 2019: [https://hyperallergic.com/480239/a-virtual-reality-app-
that-...](https://hyperallergic.com/480239/a-virtual-reality-app-that-
reconstructs-ancient-rome-may-have-exploited-its-developers/).

EDIT for tl;dr purposes: the models and textures have almost entirely been
developed through public funding over a 20 year period but have recently been
trademarked by Bernie Frischer Consulting (AKA Flyover Zone Productions) which
this website is serving as a shop window for. Seems pretty sleazy and a bit of
a shame to me as: 1) it's a great if slightly patchy resource which sounds
like it really should be under public access somehow; 2) a couple of hours in
the hands of a decent 3D artist to setup lighting and cameras correctly would
do this model so much more justice.

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mongol
Not sure I follow. You say they have been trademarked. The reference from the
article that mentions trademark:

"As a staunch proponent of open data and open access to cultural heritage, I
am disappointed to learn that the contributions made in good faith to promote
the free and open proliferation knowledge have been commercialized. I am
shocked that a project developed largely with taxpayer funding has been
trademarked by a private company registered to Bernie Frischer himself."

It seems to me the word trademark actually refers to some kind of copyright? I
agree that taxpayer's money should contribute to something that can be reused
by others, and/or owned by public institutions. In this case it seems unclear
what has happened. Is the data available so anyone can create the same kind of
"product" or is the data copyrighted?

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robbbbbbbbbbbb
I would point you (and anyone else asking similar questions) to the article I
linked above as it's well written and definitely better informed than I am.

Briefly, it sounds like the dataset is not copyrighted, but is also no longer
publicly accessible. The artifacts produced from it (the 360 VR app, and this
fly-through video) are copyrighted, proprietary products being marketed to
schools, for profit.

I'm definitely not opposed to the use of open access data sets in creating
commercial products, I think that's a great idea and I've done it myself in
the past. But it does seem a shame in this case that the people doing the
commercialising haven't done a great job of acknowledging others who've done
the really hard work of creating the assets in the first place.

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lifeisstillgood
This is fantastic. I'm a sucker for history from the "as lived" point of view
- and there is little more "as lived" than the streets and houses and
apartment blocks. (The posh floors were ground floors - the poor has to
schlepp up all those stairs)

And Circus Maximus ... it could seat 1/4 Million people !! Holy Moly - that's
bigger than stadiums today. (different Health and Safety rules I know) but
still ... that's insane.

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PhantomGremlin
Video is 11 minutes long. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The quality can only
improve over time.

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nn3
Would have been nice if they had showed at least parts of the "slummy parts"
of Rome (as they put it) where most people lived too.

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speps
This "Rome Reborn 1.0" layer from 2008 still works with some broken links but
buildings are there: [https://mw2.google.com/mw-earth-
vectordb/gallery_layers/rome...](https://mw2.google.com/mw-earth-
vectordb/gallery_layers/rome/en/ancient_rome_regions.kmz)

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ghevshoo
I look forward to the day when I can walk around Rome viewing something like
this on my phone and augmented reality on google maps!

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caymanjim
This is awesome, but...why are there tourists standing around in modern-day
clothing like flannel shirts and leather jackets?

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Doubl
For scale and because they've recreated the buildings but not gone back in
time I think

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andybak
Their VR product is tragically disappointing. It's all prerendered 360. I
can't work out why as the poly count doesn't seem so high to have prevented
working in real-time.

I could forgive the crude, flat lighting if it was true VR but we get the
worst of both worlds - low-quality rendering and the lack of presence you get
from non-volumetric content.

Hopefully they will improve their offering in future as this is exactly the
kind of thing that VR was made for.

[https://www.romereborn.org/](https://www.romereborn.org/)

EDIT - addressed in their FAQ:

Q: Do you plan to offer open-world VR?

A: Yes. "Open world" means that the user can move at will through the virtual
space. At the moment, our users are fixed to a single vantage point, around
which they can pivot at will to obtain a 360 panoramic view of the scene. We
consider this a temporary expedient necessitated by the frame-rate
requirements of the VR stores we use and by the computational limits of some
of the VR headsets we support (e.g., GearVR and Go). As soon as the stores
change their minimum hardware requirements to the point where our open world
apps can meet their frame rate benchmark, we will release our apps in both the
current panoramic flavor (which will probably continue for some time to be
needed for headsets not reliant on external computing resources) and in the
open-world flavor. We definitely want to be the first to realize Palmer
Luckey's original motivation in creating consumer-level VR headsets of making
it possible to walk down the streets of ancient Rome.

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app4soft
Really bad quality of 3D modeling.

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jhbadger
I hate to agree with you, but yes. This is a project that started in the late
1990s, and while it was state-of-the-art then, not so much now as compared to
the near photo-realistic environments of today's video games. That being said,
the point of this is to be a realistic depiction, and the more detailed the
modeling gets the more would have to be invented rather than being
historically documented.

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mirimir
Yeah, that's the point. There _is_ no recorded detail. Existing remnants are
highly eroded. Just seeing all those buildings in context is wonderful.

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ldng
Nice work. I always wondered why has been working on and AR app to navigate
through the Palatine. I suppose you need to go through the 3D modeling step
first.

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dmolony
Nice idea, but the saccharine voiceover made it impossible to listen to for
me.

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kerng
Interesting. But I like Assasin's Creed's modeling better. Maybe they should
have teamed up?

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smadge
For one, I imagine since this project is more academic in nature (as opposed
to commercial or for entertainment) they aren’t optimizing for flashiness but
for historical accuracy based on the archeology. Second they probably have a
lot less funding than a high budget video game. It would be cool though if the
makers of Assassins Creed could devote some of their big budget and expertise
to helping this project shine, as long as it doesn’t detract from their core
mission of historical inquiry and accuracy.

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cat199
Interesting that 'smart history' chooses a picture of the circus maximus that
obscures the fact that it is now st peters basilica in rome, itself no small
historical detail..

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martinpw
I don't think that's right. Circus Maximus is near the Colosseum and still
exists as a park.

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arethuza
Not to mention the Vatican is on the other side of the river Tiber!

