
ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World - bpierre
http://orbis.stanford.edu//
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evolve2k
'Conventional maps that represent this world as it appears from space signally
fail to capture the severe environmental constraints that governed the flows
of people, goods and information. Cost, rather than distance, is the principal
determinant of connectivity.

For the first time, ORBIS allows us to express Roman communication costs in
terms of both time and expense. By simulating movement along the principal
routes of the Roman road network, the main navigable rivers, and hundreds of
sea routes in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and coastal Atlantic, this
interactive model reconstructs the duration and financial cost of travel in
antiquity.'

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bane
I like how I posted this earlier, but the repost with the messed up URL gets
the votes ;)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8001507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8001507)

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anigbrowl
Most interesting. I picked up _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ in a
used bookstore recently and this seems like it will be a useful study aid.

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tempodox
Too bad, it doesn't seem to work in Safari. I find what I see incomprehensible
and unusable. Some shapes seem to be drawn much too large.

In Chrome, it looks better.

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elijahmeeks
I'd love to see a screenshot, if you want to tweet or email me. I never had
any problems testing it on Safari.

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coldcode
This would make the core of an interesting game.

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javajosh
Yes. The mechanic could be a variant of "ticket to ride" where instead of
different color trains you get donkey, ship, and horse cards.

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maaku
> ORBIS is designed for modern browsers and uses technology that works best in
> Chrome or Safari.

This is on latest Firefox. Really? The only truly open browser is not
"modern"?

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codezero
Does it not work properly on Firefox? If so, I bet they'd probably appreciate
the feedback on what is broken so they can try to fix it.

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jordanb
For me, on Firefox it immediately displays a splash screen recommending I
switch to Chrome or Safari.

