HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ 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.

⬐ 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.

⬐ flexie

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

⬐ 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-....

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.

⬐ 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?

⬐ 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.

⬐ 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.

⬐ PhantomGremlin

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

⬐ 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.

⬐ speps

> When Rome Reborn 2.0 was launched in 2008, it originally came in the form of a free and downloadable 3D Google Earth layer used widely by teachers in K-12 and elsewhere through the Google Earth browser. This layer is no longer available directly through Google Earth. (from https://hyperallergic.com/480239/a-virtual-reality-app-that-...)

I wonder if someone has a copy of this layer.

⬐ 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...

⬐ 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!

⬐ caymanjim

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

⬐ Doubl

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

⬐ 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/

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.

⬐ app4soft

Really bad quality of 3D modeling.

⬐ 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.

⬐ 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.

⬐ 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.

⬐ Emily1636

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⬐ dmolony

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

⬐ kerng

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

⬐ kerng

Rumors has it that a future Assassin's Creed will be set in Rome entirely. Why the downvotes? This would be an obvious great combination of these two projects.

⬐ kerng

Since there are a lot if downvotes: https://assassinscreed.fandom.com/wiki/Rome?file=Climbing_ro...

This was nearly 10 years ago!

⬐ 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.

⬐ kerng

Exactly my point, that's why I'm surprised by all the downvotes.

⬐ 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..

⬐ Jedd

Can confirm that they have it right -- a) I was there a couple of months ago (and this would have been a tremendous resource to view just before doing the walk around), and b) they even have a picture of the contemporary circus maximus in the video.

St Peter's is about 3km north-west of this site.

⬐ martinpw

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

⬐ arethuza

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

⬐ asymmetric

Sorry but you are very wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circus_Maximus

⬐ cicero

You are probably thinking of the Circus of Nero, which was the place where St. Peter was crucified upside-down. Peter was buried in a nearby necropolis, which is now the site of St. Peter's basilica. Drawings I've seen show that the east end of Circus of Nero site intersects the southern portion of St. Peter's Square. Also, the obelisk in the center of St. Peter's Square was previously in the center of the Circus of Nero, similar to the obelisk of the Circus Maximus shown in the video. There are enough similarities between the two places that confusion is understandable.

⬐ 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"..

⬐ 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=necqGAYknIY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dxQbqVB7iU