(Seen on Rogueclassicism; from AME)
The Foundation for the Hellenic World will be launching a large immersive VR of the ancient Athenian Agora as part of the Hellenic Cosmos site, using the Silicon Graphics Prism tool from SGI. This is all proprietary technology, of course, but it still looks kind of cool.
The following is from the SGI Press release:
Late next year, Foundation of the Hellenic World’s (FHW) innovative cultural center/museum, Hellenic Cosmos, will feature an immersive virtual tour of Agora, the heart of ancient Athens. For the development of this stunning virtual reality (VR) presentation in advance of the 2006 opening of a state-of-the-art immersive 128-seat domed theater, the Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW), a not-for-profit cultural institution in Athens, Greece, selected visualization technology from Silicon Graphics (NYSE: SGI). FHW will use the SGI system to add more animations and much more realistic graphics to the Agora presentation than its previous VR datasets. The final implementation solution will be decided at a later date.
The Agora’s buildings were the center of public life, a site of political meetings, commercial transactions, the administrative center and also the judicial and religious center of the city. Socrates often met his disciples there, in the shade of the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios. The ruins of the Agora can be visited today, below the hill where the Acropolis stands, but for the first time, visitors and residents of Athens will be able to tour the ancient Agora immersively and interactively, filled with the living, breathing activities of its long history.
(Any other good VR visualisation projects out there?)
