

Interactive Sistine Chapel - carnevalem
http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html

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lt
When I was there, I was expecting the iconic god image to be huge but it was
only a small part of the ceiling.

In fact, even though the ceiling takes most of the fame, my favorite painting
was Michaelangelo's Last Judgement depicted in the altar wall:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Judgment_(Michelangelo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Judgment_\(Michelangelo\))

The later-added fig leaves and robe parts do stand out which I thought was a
shame. Lots of art in the Vatican museum have private parts which have been
broken (in statues) or covered/painted over.

Another impressive point that stands out is that the ceiling is mostly flat.
The painted arches and columns give it an amazing 3D look.

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scott_s
Extremely impressive. It took me a few minutes to catch on to the fact that
everything was flat, and all of the intricate woodwork I saw around the
windows and awnings was, in fact, painted.

Further in the Vatican tour, after the chapel, there's a room which has its
ceiling similarly painted to look like woodwork. There is no illusion; you see
it immediately for what it is. It helped to demonstrate to me how good
Michelangelo was.

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nbrochu
Having never been there, I was pretty interested in using the site to discover
the Chapel... until 4-5 minutes in and the Flash still wasn't fully pre-loaded
on my 50 Mbit connection!

While the final size of the download might remain the same in the end, only
loading the requested zoom level à la Google Maps instead would give it a way
more acceptable "instant-like" feeling. Pre-loading the entire thing before
users can interact is just plain bad usability.

If it wasn't a famous landmark, I would have left the site within 30 seconds.
Still, I applaud the initiative and am happy to have seen the place in such
details!

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lt
Interesting. It did demand-load here. In fact it is still loading (there's a
progress bar at about 80% in the middle of the screen and some parts of the
image are still blurry)

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vital101
It seems so small. For those of you that have actually been there, is it
really small, or is the perspective just warped because of the medium through
which I'm seeing it?

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bshep
I was there about 7 years ago and it seemed a decent size, but it wasnt big
like St. Peters.

A more objective view from wikipedia: "Above is the main space, the Chapel,
the internal measurements of which are 40.9 metres (134 ft) long by 13.4
metres (44 ft) wide—the dimensions of the Temple of Solomon, as given in the
Old Testament[9]."

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tibbon
At Disney's Epcot Center some 13 years ago I remember they had virtual sistine
chapel with a headtracking setup and 3d headset. The other people in the room
could just watch on a projector.

I got to 'drive' it but we had to stop it early because some lady in the room
was getting severe motion sickness from me flying around the room quickly. I
guess she wasn't used to seeing things like that.

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adrianwaj
Looks like PixelCase technology, which has a similar styled aerial view of
Australian cities: <http://melbourne.com/> \- and New York
<http://www.pixelcase.com.au/vr/2009/newyork/>

