Comments on: $3 million virtual tour of the Forbidden City

$3 million virtual tour of the Forbidden City

stbalbach — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:38:10 -0800

A $3million dollar, 3-year project by IBM to create a virtual tour of China's Forbidden City was released Friday. It is a large download, but there is support for Mac, Linux and Windows. Unlike most virtual tourist projects, this one seems to foreground actual human beings, and not just artifacts (architecture, art). It is based on gaming software but with an emphasis on historical authenticity and "a sense of decorum", meaning "you can't run and you can't fly," in the Forbidden City.

By: Class Goat

Class Goat — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:51:37 -0800

I give it 24 hours before someone cracks the data and releases a modified version with weapons.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:54:22 -0800

A little Chinese boy in a fur hat with a scarlet top keeps running through my beautiful mutilcolored banners.

By: TheOnlyCoolTim

TheOnlyCoolTim — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:54:36 -0800

Needs more dongcopters.

By: Abiezer

Abiezer — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:34:33 -0800

Well, this is great and all (love that you can play weiqi, if only I wasn't so crap at it), but does it have Roger Moore doing a commentary?

By: lupus_yonderboy

lupus_yonderboy — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:06:27 -0800

Woah, you can play weiqi (Go)?! I'm so there! But man, a quarter gig download?! They can't do better than that?! I have a pretty serious connection and it's taking me 10 minutes or so.

By: specialfriend

specialfriend — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:09:10 -0800

Has anyone found the Starbucks?

By: taschenrechner

taschenrechner — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:13:12 -0800

Did they include the Starbuck's?

By: flaterik

flaterik — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:23:28 -0800

The Starbucks isn't there any more, or at least wasn't when I was there in June of last year.

By: alidarbac

alidarbac — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:28:13 -0800

Well, this is great and all (love that you can play weiqi, if only I wasn't so crap at it), but does it have Roger Moore doing a commentary? I think they don't have the Roger Moore audio tour anymore. I remember visiting the Forbidden City in '99 and getting the English audio tour with the narration by Roger Moore. It was hammier than an Italian hoagie, with lines like, "Close your eyes and imagine yourself as an emperor standing along the parapice in front of the Gate of Heavenly Virtue, thousands of eunuchs prostrate below you, the call of their tightly wound sheepskin drums reverberating through the chambers." It was by far the most awesome thing I had ever heard. Unfortunately when I returned last year, they replaced that audio tour with one read by a Chinese person with a competent American English accent but completely lacking in character.

By: awfurby

awfurby — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:30:13 -0800

Is there a section where a woman comes up to you and says "Hello, I am a student from a University in Xian - we are having an exhibition of Chinese paintings and drawings - would you like to come and see our exhibition?" and you follow her into a building where you somehow end up buying paintings of blossoms and birds that you didn't even know you needed?

By: Abiezer

Abiezer — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:45:06 -0800

I live about a kilometre north of the place but haven't been for years, aldibarc. I make do with the cheapskate's view from the hill in Jingshan Park. Remember it being a bit of a rat in a maze experience last time I did visit.

By: taschenrechner

taschenrechner — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:03:11 -0800

Damn, no more Starbucks? I guess someone listened to the shrieking in horror of the thousands of foreigners hoping to see something unspoiled by China's unbridled consumption of western goods.

By: lilkeith07

lilkeith07 — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:21:38 -0800

It's pretty interesting but a bit boring for me after about 10-15 mins playing around with it. I thought the most interesting part was when you clicked on the map it shows you a black line of everywhere you have gone, I guess its so you don't miss anything.

By: twoleftfeet

twoleftfeet — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:37:07 -0800

I think it's seriously cool. I'd love to see more of this kind of thing - a really detailed virtual ancient Rome, virtual ancient Egypt, virtual Aztec and Mayan cities. It's the way people will learn history in the near future. It's what Second Life could have become if people weren't so obsessed with creating virtual shops and orgy rooms. But anyway... has anyone found an opium den in this thing?

By: -t

-t — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:39:10 -0800

I tried to greet someone and they ran away, just like in real life!

By: 1adam12

1adam12 — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:56:31 -0800

At one point Mao flirted with the idea of simply knocking down the Forbidden City, just like he did the entire city wall. But now running is apparently disrespectful. Progress!

By: rokusan

rokusan — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:04:16 -0800

It's what Second Life could have become if people weren't so obsessed with creating virtual shops and orgy rooms. So Phase 1 is 'create a nobler race of man?'

By: Mr_Zero

Mr_Zero — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:11:44 -0800

I geeted someone and they thanked me for the highly lucrative Iraqi oil contract.

By: ramboslambos

ramboslambos — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:25:58 -0800

the beginning of the matrix

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 01:54:38 -0800

needs wasd & mouse look/strafe.

By: jfuller

jfuller — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 03:10:33 -0800

> I give it 24 hours before someone cracks the data and releases a modified version with weapons. > posted by Class Goat at 11:51 PM on October 12 [5 favorites +] [!] Damn right. I want my BFG!

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 05:07:03 -0800

I wish I could experience this. Alas, it is forbidden.

By: Harald74

Harald74 — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 06:23:31 -0800

I'd love to see more of this kind of thing - a really detailed virtual ancient Rome, virtual ancient Egypt, virtual Aztec and Mayan cities. I second that. Mod tools for the different FPS games are available and fairly user friendly, so it could be a good project for someone obsessive...

By: Ziggy Zaga

Ziggy Zaga — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 07:30:47 -0800

It's what Second Life could have become... I was talking to someone about how sad Second Life is and he described it as being nothing more than a virtual Craigslist but with more perverts. On topic, I don't think Second Life would have been a worthwhile tool for historical modeling and exploration. Something done in the Hammer engine would blow that out of the water...does exploring ancient cities really need to involve social networking?

By: aldus_manutius

aldus_manutius — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 07:40:03 -0800

Since someone else has already brought up Second Life, this may be yet another piece in the puzzle of IBM's involvement with Second Life. They are very involved in the developments surrounding the Open Grid/Open Sim efforts. There are more virtual worlds to be imagined and realized ...

By: briank

briank — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:02:20 -0800

An online friend of mine is the project manager for this. I've been following his blog posts about it for a long time. He worked on a similar sort of project about Ancient Egypt as well, though it's not quite as based on Second Life as the Forbidden City. Presently he's involved in a very different sort of project assisting small businesses in Western Africa. John is an amazing guy and I hope to be like him when I grow up.

By: R_Nebblesworth

R_Nebblesworth — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:05:28 -0800

The site seems to be borked. Are there download mirrors?

By: zsazsa

zsazsa — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:50:13 -0800

This reminds me a little too much of those CD-ROMs that were all the rage in the mid-90s.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:15:42 -0800

Briank, funny, I also made a FPP about EternalEgypt back in 2004.

By: quin

quin — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 10:13:05 -0800

a really detailed virtual ancient Rome, virtual ancient Egypt, virtual Aztec and Mayan cities. I keep seeing movies where they have obviously built some clearly researched and really elaborate maps of places like the Colosseum, or 1930s New York, or whatever, and I keep hoping that once the film is over and done, that the effects team would release the maps for others to play with and expand on. Though, it's probably better for my productivity that they don't do that sort of thing.

By: dunkadunc

dunkadunc — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:01:04 -0800

Kind of disappointing- it runs like molasses on my AMD Turion 64, and when I try walking forward I make it about six feet before I get jerked back five.

By: monocot

monocot — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:06:53 -0800

meaning "you can't run and you can't fly," in the Forbidden City. Darn! Some people know kungfu, you know. And what are the lovely tile roofs for if not to sprint lightly over?

By: scottymac

scottymac — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:13:08 -0800

Very cool. I'll be sure to waste some time there.

By: yoHighness

yoHighness — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:45:55 -0800

I tried it, and I don't like it. Underwhelming performance on a good machine. No fullscreen? ... Reminds me of this Versailles 1685 "game" from 1997, only that Versailles looked better.

By: agress

agress — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:18:53 -0800

They had such a great opportunity to make this look good, why did they have to make it look like such utter crap? I'm sure the thing is accurately modeled, but the lack of modern rendering touches really makes it fall flat. Or, more precisely, it looks flat. Just cause you don't strafe-jump around with a gatling gun doesn't mean you have to make it both run and look like ass. Crysis runs better on my machine than this does. I tried playing with the prefs.cs to have it full-screen and maybe utilize light bloom, and it seems that this thing seems to ignore that file. Full-screen, some dynamic LOD, a bit of haze, environment mapping, and some dynamic lighting would go a long way towards making this look good. Also anti-aliasing. Right now it reminds me of VRML.