Persepolis of ancient Persia rendered in WebGL(persepolis.getty.edu)
persepolis.getty.edu
Persepolis of ancient Persia rendered in WebGL
https://persepolis.getty.edu
214 comments
Now imagine for a moment if we painted our modern marble statues and architecture as they did. The ruins mentality is a big part of neoclassicism, to the point where the designer of the Bank of England building made a sketch of how the building would look in a thousand years' time:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/Ae...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/Ae...
Crikey the Royal Exchange is a crater.
Speaking of painting sculptures, I wonder why they never try to re-paint Greek and Roman sculptures. I've read some articles that show what the statues would have looked like back in the day and paint makes them look spectacular.
Assassins Creed has a standalone series called Discovery Tour. It is extremely similar yet has freemode, way more historical points of interest, and has people walking around. https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/assassins-creed/discovery...
Thanks for sharing this, never knew these existed - gonna be great to go through them!
When you visit Persepolis, you can rent a VR headset and see certain parts of the site reconstructed in VR. It's really impressive and drives home the scale of what was built.
Interesting! I went five years ago and didn’t see it there. It’s a great idea though. Did you go more recently or did we just miss it?
The nearby Naqsh-e Rostam (tombs of Darius and Xerxes among other things) was also stunning: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naqsh-e_Rostam
The nearby Naqsh-e Rostam (tombs of Darius and Xerxes among other things) was also stunning: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naqsh-e_Rostam
I visited Persepolis (and the tombs) in Spring 2019.
I was thinking the same thing, "I thought these civilizations only built ruins".
There won’t be much left of our civilisation. I was told recently that concrete is acidic and attacks the metal netting in reinforced concrete over the long time. None of our structures will still be up 500 years from now.
Assassins Creed gives you that everyday historical vibe very well. Highly recommend.
I couldn't agree more. I'm currently playing AC Odyssey and it's as close as you can get to being there. Lots of artistic license but they definitely did their research.
Can recommend Origins as well, riding past the pyramids has something pretty cool about it...
Not exactly what you're looking for but if you're just into aesthetic look up Talos Principle. By itself a fantastic game, but they have a VR version as well that is incredible to walk through.
> I've grown thinking about pre-medieval times as a landscape of ruins.
Jimmy Carr joked about that in QI once, how movies and series set in ancient Rome and Greece also tend to do this.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58rbknKBJvc
Jimmy Carr joked about that in QI once, how movies and series set in ancient Rome and Greece also tend to do this.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58rbknKBJvc
In aegyptus they'd be sort of right. The Egyptian ruins were as old to them as Roman ruins are to us.
"This video contains content from Fremantle International, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds"
Sorry about that. I looked for official clips (it's just before a relatively famous segment) but they don't include the Jimmy Carr joke
They do say that about the Acropolis where the Parthenon is!
It's cool indeed. But I find it sad that such a tremendous piece of architecture is not listed on the world's 7 ancient wonders while the Temple of Artemis and other Greek structures are on the list. No surprises there, given that the list was created by the Greek historian Herodotus.
Pretty sure the canonical list of Wonders isn't due to Herodotus, as several of the items on it were built after his death.
(apparently Herodotus also had a list of wonders, but it didn't survive. Given his interest in Persia though, I suspect it would've had several Persian monuments on it)
(apparently Herodotus also had a list of wonders, but it didn't survive. Given his interest in Persia though, I suspect it would've had several Persian monuments on it)
That's why any colors that have been preserved looks so great. Whether it's the temple of Medinet Habu in Egypt or the tombs of the builders, it blows your mind when you realize all those decorations in the temples were not only carved, but painted too.
I am convinced that one day you visit an old ancient site. You put on the AR/VR headset and the real-life ruins change into fresh newly constructed buildings with NPCs from that time. The headset/lenses have a pair of 32k displays with a vof wider than your eyes. Graphics are rendered with 100 trillion rays per frame at 240fps. About 10.000 times faster than current hardware.
Just explored it with my 4 year old son. He insisted on a second tour and on clicking all of the interactive exhibits. Amazing design and execution!
What a great experience for a curious child! I was lucky enough to have grown up in the 2000s, when History / Science / Discovery channels still aired proper documentaries instead of reality TV. But I would have killed to have access to presentations like these.
In the late 90s before Wikipedia, Encarta used to scratch that itch for me. I would spend hours browsing articles, and some of the multimedia presentations were truly impressive[1].
I think if it were alive today, presentations like this Getty one would be common. As much information as Wikipedia has, it's presented in a very static way, which is a shame. There's huge potential of making the information there interactive, and thus more appealing to younger generations (and everyone, really) who otherwise wouldn't read an article with thousands of words and some pictures and audio.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxHM6oGttsA
I think if it were alive today, presentations like this Getty one would be common. As much information as Wikipedia has, it's presented in a very static way, which is a shame. There's huge potential of making the information there interactive, and thus more appealing to younger generations (and everyone, really) who otherwise wouldn't read an article with thousands of words and some pictures and audio.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxHM6oGttsA
Horrible UI but would be cool otherwise. On an Android and the performance was fine but way too much finger swiping.
On a laptop with trackpad it was enjoyable for me.
On my laptop, I disliked that I couldn't scroll back to previous sections when you move, and wished I could scroll at my own pace. Whole thing was buttery smooth though, I'm impressed.
The button in the upper right pops out a map where you can re-enter a section.
I was completely unable to get it to "scroll": iPhone, MacBook running Firefox or Chromium, trackpad, arrow keys, the handle thingy on the right edge of the browser... nix nada nothing.
Yeah, I'm on mobile and gave up less than a minute in.
I was able to click the scene with the mouse and then press the page down key to scroll at normal pace in a desktop browser.
But I had to keep clicking every time a new scene loaded, which I consider an unforced error. I'm always so impressed with the level of effort that goes into these types of projects, but so baffled that so many obvious issues always seem to slip by somehow! My guess is that some issue with the scroll hijacking made this difficult to fix, like maybe a loader framework resets the focus and they didn't have an easy way to modify its code or something.
But I had to keep clicking every time a new scene loaded, which I consider an unforced error. I'm always so impressed with the level of effort that goes into these types of projects, but so baffled that so many obvious issues always seem to slip by somehow! My guess is that some issue with the scroll hijacking made this difficult to fix, like maybe a loader framework resets the focus and they didn't have an easy way to modify its code or something.
Yeah, I gave up because it was nearly impossible to move precisely between segments. It kept either not being enough and resetting back to a stop point, or my frustrated flicks skipped over 3 whole segments
Not directly related, but I can still recommend "Assassin's Creed Odyssey" as a very enjoyable recreation of key places and buildings around ancient Greece. Ubisoft spent a considerable effort to research and recreate some highlights, and being able to freely walk around help a lot with immersion.
Came here to see if someone mentioned this. It truly is breathtaking. There's a youtube video with an ancient greece scholar giving a commentary as a player walks through ancient Athens in the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etq7Rw5ioUI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etq7Rw5ioUI
Extremely well done (at least for desktop). Many seem to dislike that it's scroll-controlled, but tbh I would've given up immediately if it were free navigation—I didn't feel like wandering around looking for things, just wanted to observe the sights. And since the core structure is a sequential list of sights, the scroll interface is a nice way of keeping that linear structure in place while automatically choosing nice camera positions along the transitions.
There are many other small interaction cues that are expertly done, bringing in various optional jump-off points (e.g. viewing the same scene present day) without breaking continuity to explicitly teach anything. Another example: highlighting text on in-scene plaques as they're read (with high quality voice-acting). This is a well thought through experience.
There are many other small interaction cues that are expertly done, bringing in various optional jump-off points (e.g. viewing the same scene present day) without breaking continuity to explicitly teach anything. Another example: highlighting text on in-scene plaques as they're read (with high quality voice-acting). This is a well thought through experience.
What if I am using a mouse without a scroll wheel?
I would guess arrow keys?
The arrow keys don't work. The scroll bar doesn't work. Having to use a scroll wheel or swipe continually is a pain.
How about just clicking on the next area? How could scrolling possibly be better.
Because it gives you easy access to continuous motion. I found myself constantly making slight adjustments to move a little back or forward to get better looks at specific things. It’s the same kind of freedom you get from mouse freelook in an fps but simpler to control because it’s collapsed to 1d.
Worked incredibly on my mac! A bit annoying to navigate by scroll, but nevertheless amazing in my opinion.
Very nice model, but sadly it's Getty, so it's not available to download. That would be a good way to get the story and images out. Make it free to download, and people would turn it into Quake maps, and eventually people would learn more about Persepolis.
It worked great on my iPhone 13 Pro Max. But it is quite warm now. The scrolling worked well without any hiccups. I didn’t test it on my PC yet. The only thing I would wish is a little bit more life in the scenes. I love how games like Tomb Raider or Uncharted give little details some movement. I think the overall presentation is awesome just too clean for my taste.
> games like Tomb Raider or Uncharted give little details some movement
Remember that those games have budgets of tens of millions of dollars and are built by literally hundreds artists and programmers. Animation is very time consuming (and hence expensive) so it’s no wonder to me that the creators of this project opted for a static scene, this way they could deliver something cool more quickly instead of dragging this project for months and risking cancelling it due to lack of funds to finish it.
Remember that those games have budgets of tens of millions of dollars and are built by literally hundreds artists and programmers. Animation is very time consuming (and hence expensive) so it’s no wonder to me that the creators of this project opted for a static scene, this way they could deliver something cool more quickly instead of dragging this project for months and risking cancelling it due to lack of funds to finish it.
I’m very well aware of this. But I’m also aware that we have game engines like Unity, Unreal or the Cry engine which have webGL options and such and various tools etc to make the process cheaper. I didn’t check the credits if it contained a reference to the tools used.
It wasn’t a critique to the creators of the project or that I think it isn’t good. It is really great especially since it runs in the browser and looks as good as it does but again just too static for me. I would wish if it contained a little bit more ambient elements.
This reminds me of Encarta. Encyclopedia on a cd-rom, with audio, video and images on many subjects, all clickable.
Encarta was awesome. It felt like it had a wealth of information on a cd-rom. It was quite magical in the early 90s. I miss those days. All of it.
It was one of my favorite "computer games" as a kid. I used to keep an alphabetical list of the other things I wanted to look up so that I could minimizing having to switch between the all of the discs (3? 4? 5?) it came on.
Consdering the state of learning materials for the remainder of my educational (and professional, I'm looking at you compliance courses) life, it really is mindblowing what they achieved with Encarta in the '90s.
Is any company still producing that type of encyclopedia experience? Wikipedia has information / links / pictures, but it doesn’t have that type of immersion.
This is wonderful.
I would like having something like this with virtual reality glasses to visit historic sites like Roman Forum, Pompeia, Delphic Panhellenic Sanctuary, the Aqueduct of Segovia, The Roman theatre of Mérida...
If a tenth of the money spend in games were spend in make such a projects...
I would like having something like this with virtual reality glasses to visit historic sites like Roman Forum, Pompeia, Delphic Panhellenic Sanctuary, the Aqueduct of Segovia, The Roman theatre of Mérida...
If a tenth of the money spend in games were spend in make such a projects...
I don't know if it qualifies, but there is this for ancient Olympia, created by Microsoft:
https://inculture.microsoft.com/arts/ancient-olympia-common-...
https://inculture.microsoft.com/arts/ancient-olympia-common-...
Very well made to navigate the site, just missing a birds-eye perspective or mini-map to show the current location of the camera (and angle?) within the city.
and I very much like the sound effects.
and I very much like the sound effects.
The little diamond icon in the upper right corner takes you an overview map, but it doesn't show you those things.
When you're between scenes with descriptions you can pan around by dragging the mouse. I'm hoping they extend this to allow free walking around.
When you're between scenes with descriptions you can pan around by dragging the mouse. I'm hoping they extend this to allow free walking around.
I visited Persepolis in 2016 -- having this experience before the actual visit would have been incredible!
I visited maybe around a decade ago, and was truly saddened by the state of it. It was all in ruin, maybe 1 guard watching the whole area, anyone could come, take a piece and leave, and many unfortunately do. The best pieces of Persepolis are sadly kept outside the country, in places such as the Louvre [0]. Iran itself does such a poor job at taking care of it's truly breathtaking historical and touristic sites. A few years ago I also got the chance to visit Tepe Sialk [1], which had settlements dating back 6000 BC. Again, barely a single person around. Striked a conversation with the old man at the gift shop, and it turns out he was one of the archeologists that had spent decades exploring the site alongside famous French archeologists. Many of the pieces again ending up at the Louvre.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/arts/persian-collections-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tepe_Sialk
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/arts/persian-collections-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tepe_Sialk
It's sad how much has been stolen and kept in western museums. Just look at what's in the British Museum in London...
Well isn’t it better to safeguard things in the British Museum than let them get lost forever?
Yep. Better stolen than destroyed if you ask me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan
It was in stable condition until it was set on fire by a westerner and until part of the remains were stolen by other westerners. Plus the country would be a democracy today without western 1953 coup.
Xerxes shouldn't have burned Athens. His father, Darius, in fact had advised him to follow the protocol set by himself and Cyrus.
Dr. Mossadeqh was not running a "democracy". Post WWII Iran's political space was far more complex than the caricature presented since the fall of the Shah, and sans British instigated support for counter-coup to remove Mossadegh with help from USA, a quite significant chunk of Iranian military and society, including the Clergy (who were already using terror in Iran, btw), agreed with the American analysis that Mossadegh would merely precede a Soviet controlled Tudeh takeover of Iran.
Dr. Mossadeqh was not running a "democracy". Post WWII Iran's political space was far more complex than the caricature presented since the fall of the Shah, and sans British instigated support for counter-coup to remove Mossadegh with help from USA, a quite significant chunk of Iranian military and society, including the Clergy (who were already using terror in Iran, btw), agreed with the American analysis that Mossadegh would merely precede a Soviet controlled Tudeh takeover of Iran.
No, it's not. Classic example of imperialistic people...
Leave them there, take care of them there. Stop thinking everything from poor nations is up for grabs.
Leave them there, take care of them there. Stop thinking everything from poor nations is up for grabs.
> take care of them there
Which clearly isn’t happening, so IMO it makes sense to store them in a stable society with enforced property rights.
Doesn’t have to be UK or France.
Which clearly isn’t happening, so IMO it makes sense to store them in a stable society with enforced property rights.
Doesn’t have to be UK or France.
Persepolis wasn’t in great condition when I went but it also wasn’t a shambles. There’s a gift shop, guards, and a reconstruction of part of the palace, and a lot of tourists. Also a small set of offices for archaeologists. I’m a professional historian so I was a little bummed by the lack of adequate public-facing educational markers and texts, but it certainly can’t be compared to something like the Buddhas of Bamiyan as an excuse for removing items to European museums.
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Very cool!
Unfortunately, half the comments will be a shallow dismissal about the scrolling, but that's typical HN.
Unfortunately, half the comments will be a shallow dismissal about the scrolling, but that's typical HN.
Why's it slightly noisy? It never resolves to clean when the camera's still, so it doesn't seem to be MC noise for something like ambient occlusion or raytracing/pathtracing, so I assume it's just a 2D effect on top of the image for look?
They put an add-noise filter on top. It's often used to give it a more 'filmic' look and also hides away some uniformity in simple textures. Plain, plan surfaces look very fake, add some noise and suddenly it feels more 'real'.
Plus someone probably decided it would look cool...
Plus someone probably decided it would look cool...
> It never resolves to clean when the camera's still
Perhaps it just doesn't stack the renders - if it did, changing view would decrease the image quality back to low samples, maybe that's the reason...
Perhaps it just doesn't stack the renders - if it did, changing view would decrease the image quality back to low samples, maybe that's the reason...
I guess to reduce banding and soften shadow edges. Specifically the glossy floors would probably look much worse without it.
This is beautiful.
Does anyone know how many of those colors are believed to be historically accurate representations vs artistic license? The paint has long since faded, but perhaps the colors have been identified through some kind of anlysis?
There was a recent article here on HN which made me realize the importance of communicating what colors are scientifically or historically accurate vs artistic license.
Does anyone know how many of those colors are believed to be historically accurate representations vs artistic license? The paint has long since faded, but perhaps the colors have been identified through some kind of anlysis?
There was a recent article here on HN which made me realize the importance of communicating what colors are scientifically or historically accurate vs artistic license.
There are surviving examples such as the Archer at the Louvre [1]
[1]https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010210299
[1]https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010210299
Beautiful, but why this design trend of breaking the semantics of scrolling?
Website is designed for desktop with pretty good UX tbh even if it looks like breaking common patterns. It’s a very small learning curve considering it achieves the immersion it intends to.
Are you sure? These scrolling things are normally designed for mobile. I gave up on the site on desktop because it involves so much scrolling.
"Guys lets make a video but where you have to keep scrolling to make it play! That will be fun!"
Impressive rendering and interface but they should have thought about the UI a bit more.
"Guys lets make a video but where you have to keep scrolling to make it play! That will be fun!"
Impressive rendering and interface but they should have thought about the UI a bit more.
It's nice because scrolling is a 1d interaction, and the path you're navigating is 1d. It's superior to a movie because this scheme makes it super simple to control how long you spend at various points, and they open up optional interactions at various points.
I don't understand why a lot of scrolling would be problematic, doesn't seem different then e.g. pushing arrow keys over and over when playing a video game.
I don't understand why a lot of scrolling would be problematic, doesn't seem different then e.g. pushing arrow keys over and over when playing a video game.
A single repeated movement is very tiring. You compare to games, but games have you press different buttons, and there is usually either some rythm and variety to it, or at least hold the button (e.g. in a racing game you usually hold the acceleration button)
In this website you need to keep scrolling, which is pretty monotonous, it would be equivalent of spamming "next" on an overly complicated late 2000s Windows software installer. Or watching a Youtube video by spamming the frame skip shortcut.
If you want to make a scroll interactive experience (please don't), then at least do the courtesy of having 1 scroll gesture = 1 piece of information, don't have users scroll their wheels like 6 times just to wade through a path slowly. Or at the very least support the page up/down buttons!
Look at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ52fo5g03Q. I even accidentally skipped over some text sections because I was scrolling furiously to be able to go anywhere. Finally, I accidentally used the tilt key of my scroll wheel and it went to the previous page, and I had to start all over.
In this website you need to keep scrolling, which is pretty monotonous, it would be equivalent of spamming "next" on an overly complicated late 2000s Windows software installer. Or watching a Youtube video by spamming the frame skip shortcut.
If you want to make a scroll interactive experience (please don't), then at least do the courtesy of having 1 scroll gesture = 1 piece of information, don't have users scroll their wheels like 6 times just to wade through a path slowly. Or at the very least support the page up/down buttons!
Look at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ52fo5g03Q. I even accidentally skipped over some text sections because I was scrolling furiously to be able to go anywhere. Finally, I accidentally used the tilt key of my scroll wheel and it went to the previous page, and I had to start all over.
Oh. This has nothing to do with the fact that it's a scroll-based interaction. It looks like it just doesn't work correctly with your mouse—i.e. you ran into a bug, not something that's wrong with scrolling in principle. But yeah, that looks like an annoying bug (maybe related to mouse having very high res scroll?).
I tried with trackpad and mouse on my end, and the app is well-configured for both of my devices at least: I'm able to have fine-grained control over my location by making small adjustments to scroll position.
I tried with trackpad and mouse on my end, and the app is well-configured for both of my devices at least: I'm able to have fine-grained control over my location by making small adjustments to scroll position.
> In this website you need to keep scrolling, which is pretty monotonous, it would be equivalent of spamming "next" on an overly complicated late 2000s Windows software installer. Or watching a Youtube video by spamming the frame skip shortcut.
Or scrolling through a long document, as the scroll wheel is designed to do?
You're not supposed to scroll straight through, there's stuff to see and read! If you want to skip around, there's navigation on the right side.
Or scrolling through a long document, as the scroll wheel is designed to do?
You're not supposed to scroll straight through, there's stuff to see and read! If you want to skip around, there's navigation on the right side.
> Or scrolling through a long document, as the scroll wheel is designed to do?
And it does with a reasonable speed configurable by the user, which is easily mentally mapped to how much it will move since it's just a 2D surface. For example, I have mine set so each full scroll gesture (as you see in the video) is mapped to a whole screenful of movement. So I know that a complete scroll will show me all new information.
Scrolling through this path, each segment has different lengths and speeds, so you need trial and error to reach a specific point. And then sometimes it's just an animation and your scroll doesn't matter beyond initiating it. Not to mention that it's roughly 3 full scrolls to reach a new POI, the in-between is just transition.
> [...] there's stuff to see [...]
There is not [any more stuff to see thanks to the scrolling], because I can't look around, so it's just a video that wastes more GPU power.
> [...] and read!
Yes! And I skip right through some of it because when there is not a text in sight, I need to spam the wheel to get anywhere and overshoot.
> If you want to skip around, there's navigation on the right side.
True, but it's a miserable experience, since I have to hover each dot individually to know what it's about, as they don't show up on the overview map.
---
Don't get me wrong, this is an amazing recreation full of very interesting information, it's just presented in the most frustrating possible way to use it. Take heart to the interactive medium, give me WASD and mouse-look! (Or at least a Google Steet View like spherical navigation, since it's probably more accessible) Let me go and walk to a corner so I can look back and see the full scale of the architecture, or wander among the columns of the great halls! This is so much wasted potential just in terms of interactivity.
And it does with a reasonable speed configurable by the user, which is easily mentally mapped to how much it will move since it's just a 2D surface. For example, I have mine set so each full scroll gesture (as you see in the video) is mapped to a whole screenful of movement. So I know that a complete scroll will show me all new information.
Scrolling through this path, each segment has different lengths and speeds, so you need trial and error to reach a specific point. And then sometimes it's just an animation and your scroll doesn't matter beyond initiating it. Not to mention that it's roughly 3 full scrolls to reach a new POI, the in-between is just transition.
> [...] there's stuff to see [...]
There is not [any more stuff to see thanks to the scrolling], because I can't look around, so it's just a video that wastes more GPU power.
> [...] and read!
Yes! And I skip right through some of it because when there is not a text in sight, I need to spam the wheel to get anywhere and overshoot.
> If you want to skip around, there's navigation on the right side.
True, but it's a miserable experience, since I have to hover each dot individually to know what it's about, as they don't show up on the overview map.
---
Don't get me wrong, this is an amazing recreation full of very interesting information, it's just presented in the most frustrating possible way to use it. Take heart to the interactive medium, give me WASD and mouse-look! (Or at least a Google Steet View like spherical navigation, since it's probably more accessible) Let me go and walk to a corner so I can look back and see the full scale of the architecture, or wander among the columns of the great halls! This is so much wasted potential just in terms of interactivity.
Idk, I thought the text was frequent enough for the experience to work.
> I can't look around, so it's just a video that wastes more GPU power.
Fwiw, you can drag to look around most scenes. (Although I actually don't think this added much and agree that using WebGL was probably wasteful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30965352)
> I can't look around, so it's just a video that wastes more GPU power.
Fwiw, you can drag to look around most scenes. (Although I actually don't think this added much and agree that using WebGL was probably wasteful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30965352)
They are trying to create an immersive experience with open technology... On the web, for ordinary computers.
I think it's a success. Only tried touchpad scrolling. It's tactile and works.
I think it's a success. Only tried touchpad scrolling. It's tactile and works.
Out of all places this is exactly the place where that actually works. “Scroll to walk” is better than “push a button to walk” and works on both mobile and desktop.
My kingdom for basic WASD controls and mouselook
This is cool, but since all positional movement is on-rails, I find myself questioning their decision to use real-time rendering, as opposed to a pre-rendered video that users can scroll through. The latter approach would have allowed Getty to use higher quality models and lighting, and made the experience smoother on low-end devices, possibly at the cost of bandwidth.
A conventional video would mean loosing the ability to drag to look around, but I'm not convinced that this was a significant part of the experience—IIRC, they don't even tell you that it's possible. Alternately, Getty could have sent a 360° video, at the cost of even more bandwidth.
A conventional video would mean loosing the ability to drag to look around, but I'm not convinced that this was a significant part of the experience—IIRC, they don't even tell you that it's possible. Alternately, Getty could have sent a 360° video, at the cost of even more bandwidth.
Wouldn't a pre-rendered video also force a single (possibly sub-optimal) experience across various form factors?
> made the experience smoother on low-end devices, possibly at the cost of bandwidth
Especially in the context of low-end devices, I don't think the cost of bandwidth should be discounted here.
> made the experience smoother on low-end devices, possibly at the cost of bandwidth
Especially in the context of low-end devices, I don't think the cost of bandwidth should be discounted here.
> Wouldn't a pre-rendered video also force a single (possibly sub-optimal) experience across various form factors?
Since they'd still be working from a 3D scene, they could easily render ten different videos (or twenty, or thirty) and send a different one depending on the device.
> Especially in the context of low-end devices, I don't think the cost of bandwidth should be discounted here.
I agree, which is why I'm not positive they did the wrong thing, I'm just skeptical.
The thing is, it's not as though their current approach is particularly light on bandwidth. They appear to be downloading many (all?) of the models and textures ahead of time, which makes sense, since it's hard to predict what will be visible in the viewport first. By contrast, videos naturally lend themselves to incremental streaming.
We're also pretty good at compressing videos these days, and a lot of AAA video games are significantly larger than even movies on BluRay (although I admit, I've never quite grokked how this can be.)
So, I'd be interested to see the bandwidth comparison. It's not entirely obvious to me which would win out.
Since they'd still be working from a 3D scene, they could easily render ten different videos (or twenty, or thirty) and send a different one depending on the device.
> Especially in the context of low-end devices, I don't think the cost of bandwidth should be discounted here.
I agree, which is why I'm not positive they did the wrong thing, I'm just skeptical.
The thing is, it's not as though their current approach is particularly light on bandwidth. They appear to be downloading many (all?) of the models and textures ahead of time, which makes sense, since it's hard to predict what will be visible in the viewport first. By contrast, videos naturally lend themselves to incremental streaming.
We're also pretty good at compressing videos these days, and a lot of AAA video games are significantly larger than even movies on BluRay (although I admit, I've never quite grokked how this can be.)
So, I'd be interested to see the bandwidth comparison. It's not entirely obvious to me which would win out.
I wonder if a hybrid approach would work well here to maximize both quality and bandwidth, using baked textures and similar techniques. The idea would be to generate the scene dynamically but use pre-calculated lighting, shadows, etc. as much as possible since the content is basically static.
To be fair, they could be doing this already, I haven't dug in to see how much is dynamic.
I'm not sure that I would've watched this as a video. Being tangentially involved -- having to actively scroll -- seems to make it more engaging. And I wouldn't have been so impressed by the website from a technical perspective.
Oh, I'm not suggesting they turn this unique experience into a boring Youtube video! But I'm wondering whether instead of rendering the scene client-side in WebGL, they should have sent the browser a series of pre-rendered, 2D frames for the user to scroll through and interact with.
It should end up as exactly the same experience, except possibly without the ability to turn all the way around, depending on whether or not they want to spend bandwidth on a 360° stream. (They would still need to send a slightly larger FOV than the viewport for their little mouse look effect.)
It should end up as exactly the same experience, except possibly without the ability to turn all the way around, depending on whether or not they want to spend bandwidth on a 360° stream. (They would still need to send a slightly larger FOV than the viewport for their little mouse look effect.)
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Terrible UX but the concept is cool.
It's giving me heavy flicker on Firefox when I "scroll" and the camera moves. Lots of solid black frames.
Same for me, but only on the first page where it's flying into the city, the rest of the pages are flawless.
I find it amazing and really interesting, but i have a "side" question: does anybody know how much does it cost to realize such a great work?
Approx 20% of gdp of the Achaemenid empire x 200 years.
There are around 20 persons credited at the end, so that should give a rough estimate. It is quite well done.
Animation and graphics is quite expensive to develop, since iterations in the development loop can take quite some time (think: do a few changes, render everything, start up the animation, check if it looks right, repeat).
Animation and graphics is quite expensive to develop, since iterations in the development loop can take quite some time (think: do a few changes, render everything, start up the animation, check if it looks right, repeat).
Extremely cool. I love this use of technology.
The trilingual inscription of King Xerxes at the main gate reminds me a lot, in tone, to Ramesses II's words in Shelley's famous poem "Ozymandias".
The trilingual inscription of King Xerxes at the main gate reminds me a lot, in tone, to Ramesses II's words in Shelley's famous poem "Ozymandias".
I played Assassin Creed Origin (ACO) few years ago, the 1st AC game I felt really immersed in. I played the AC1 back in the early 2000s but it didn't click for me. ACO is different: totally open world. You could climb anywhere, even to the top of the pyramid of Giza during its glorious time with the golden top. You can climb to the light-house on top of the library of Alexandria. The sceneries are majestic. I feel like I travel back in time and live in the era.
At the end of the game, you have an option to "explore and learn". In this mode, there would be no fighting and you are given a guided tour through ancient Egypt. This is truly the most fascinating moment in my gaming life. The other one would be wandering aimlessly in Microsoft Encatar exploring mode.
I couldn't wait to experience all this again in a truly HD VR world. Maybe some day!
At the end of the game, you have an option to "explore and learn". In this mode, there would be no fighting and you are given a guided tour through ancient Egypt. This is truly the most fascinating moment in my gaming life. The other one would be wandering aimlessly in Microsoft Encatar exploring mode.
I couldn't wait to experience all this again in a truly HD VR world. Maybe some day!
I would love a game series set in historical time periods with the same level of detail and openness that the AC series enjoys. But less fighting and more exploring. More information about how people lived.
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In Our Time has an episode on Persepolis [0]. Great episode of a great podcast.
0 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b4z075
0 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b4z075
This is an amazing presentation
I wish instead of constant scrolling you could move forward by just holding your click/tap on a forward button on the screen. Sounded like a better UI
Brilliant to walk through. I'd love to see the ruins of it in real life.
I came to think about something I heard just this week: A city without people is not at all like itself, it's just a bunch of buildings.
So while the walk-through is amazing, to really "be there" in this palace, we'd have to see/imagine the people being there as well. Might be a tricky task for a visualization, but I'm sure it can be attempted!
I came to think about something I heard just this week: A city without people is not at all like itself, it's just a bunch of buildings.
So while the walk-through is amazing, to really "be there" in this palace, we'd have to see/imagine the people being there as well. Might be a tricky task for a visualization, but I'm sure it can be attempted!
Does anyone know what technology is used underneath? It is obviously compiled to webgl, but what are they using for development? Unity? Some other engine?
Just a normal, very old 3D CAD model. See http://www.persepolis3d.com/bbc_english.html
They made 2 documentary films out of it, the first as interviews with the archeaologists, and then this one 2006 as a 12min 3D rendered walkthrough movie. The Getty WEBGL version is just taken from this old model, with better resolution and lightning. They are constantly changing the colors, due to ongoing internal fights/theories.
You really need to compare it to the classical greek architecture (the Artemis temple of Ephesos from the same period), and the very similar older egyptian 1000 column halls, and the babylonian/assyrian palaces.
They made 2 documentary films out of it, the first as interviews with the archeaologists, and then this one 2006 as a 12min 3D rendered walkthrough movie. The Getty WEBGL version is just taken from this old model, with better resolution and lightning. They are constantly changing the colors, due to ongoing internal fights/theories.
You really need to compare it to the classical greek architecture (the Artemis temple of Ephesos from the same period), and the very similar older egyptian 1000 column halls, and the babylonian/assyrian palaces.
Looks like some some custom 3d CAD software they used to produce 3d models:
http://www.persepolis3d.com/service.htm
http://www.persepolis3d.com/service.htm
could be fun if it was a bit lighter and let people navigate through with keys
Cool stuff. Got stuck in the Accessibility Settings on my iPhone 12 Mini, the touch target didn’t register for some reason.
I really dislike the "scroll to continue" UI. Buttons would have worked much better!
Not sure what everyone else is having issues with, I've watched this on both my ubuntu boot as well as windows and it's fantastic. I just have an old logitech mouse, nothing fancy, and it's brilliant.
Whoever designed the navigation in this must have some sort of continuous-scroll device. My scroll-wheel finger would develop RSI by the time I finished exploring that using a normal scroll-wheel mouse...
On iPad things get stuck at the stairs.
Same on my iPhone
I reloaded a few times and got past it. Load lag? Site overwhelmed. Unsure.
Started hitting 5fps around Royal Feasts on my M1 Pro machine and I had to bail out, but otherwise, really spectacular.
weird - its very smooth for me on my non-pro 8GB m1 in safari...
This is why I ignore performance reports from Apple users. Unless it's something I can replicate on 100% of my test devices, it's not worth the time trying to figure out what weird configuration a some small percentage of a small percentage of users has.
I've actually never heard that criticism. There's like a total of 8 Apple configurations and most of the time, Apple users tend to be on the latest versions of iOS and macOS. I love getting Apple bug reports specifically because they're usually super easy to reproduce. The "weird configurations" type stuff is in my experience some random sloppy Android device sold for $50 and massacred by its OEM.
I like it but I wonder why the model looks so flat and more like painting over than sculpting. Did they not use bump map or the 3D model was so coarse it would not help much anyway? The view of the real artifact is way more impressive even without the painting.
Nice stuff, but that scrolling navigation? Well I am gonna send you bills of my doctor.
this is the worst experience ever on a gaming mouse that scrolls 1 tick at a time
I think a video content would also be amazing or a virtual reality. A video game experience even in web would be nice too. I find that the scroll experience was hard to use. But the idea is pretty amazing
I am a bit disappointed that it's always those grand palaces. I also want to see the environment in which average people lived, this is harder for me to imagine than those grand temples.
Average people lived in huts in the countryside; peasants still lived in physically similar huts into the twentieth century. (Maybe they still do!) I assume photographs are available.
The population of a city spanned a wide economic range, but if you want to talk about an "average person", cities didn't exist.
The population of a city spanned a wide economic range, but if you want to talk about an "average person", cities didn't exist.
You can look around with click and drag but you can't move. There was some art that I wanted to look at from close but I couldn't.
at least an ability to zoom would have been good.
It's astounding to me that something so beautiful like this was ever real with or without modern technology. It's incredible what you can do with enough man-hours.
The Getty Museum contracted this out to https://media.monks.com/
Oh my. I just recently went down the Persepolis / Alexander the Great rabbit hole. This is the side of the internet that makes it the marvel that it is.
This thing sucks. Why would I want to use my scroll wheel to navigate a 3D space? UX/UI designers need to get a clue.
Really cool!
Any details on the tech stack? The only thing i could extract from the minified source is Three.js.
When I see historical artefacts like these from Persia, I always wonder about the loss of creativity with modern approach of minimalism and optimisation to cost. Our buildings are boxes, houses white and have minimal squarey furniture, and almost everything in society feels like an exercise in optimisation towards cost and resource efficiency.
Where are our modern equivalent of marvels like Persians from ~500 B.C !
Where are our modern equivalent of marvels like Persians from ~500 B.C !
It was unwatchable for me on a recent lenovo and an Australian internet connection. Sounds cool though.
There are a few videos on youtube of Iran in the old days and it seemed like quite a beautiful place
All of the interior is rendered black. I can only see silhouettes of things. It seems to be broken.
The scrollwheel trend needs to go away. It isn't smooth at all with a wheel on desktop.
It was quite smooth for me, on a Hackintosh desktop with a gaming mouse.
IMO, in highly experiential websites like this, there's something very tactile about scrolling to move.
IMO, in highly experiential websites like this, there's something very tactile about scrolling to move.
I have a 12 pro max and the scrolling part is stuttering a lot. Almost unusable 5-10 fps.
Ran buttery smooth on my OnePlus 9 Pro.
Didn't work on my android, but on my PC this is an amazing experience!
The scrolling bothered me and I had to stop, but I did enjoy what I saw.
If you play Elden Ring and get to the Southeastern Palace scene... :)
soon they'll be on par with the 3d coliseum from encarta 2002
Scrolling broken on my phone. Stop hijacking the scrolling damnit.
It's part of the experience man. Scrolling down is used to simulate a movement forward like walking thru the scenery....
Not a great part of the experience, certainly. Needs WASD key support if nothing else. It's almost unusable with a mouse.
If you're going to make it look like a first-person perspective game, it needs to act that way.
If you're going to make it look like a first-person perspective game, it needs to act that way.
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Trouble getting it to work in Firefox on Mac OS
Doesn't work at all on latest Chrome on Android.
very cool! does anyone remember Microsoft Encarta? they had something similar where you can walk in Persepolis and interact with it.
This ran pretty well on a Galaxy S10 in Chrome.
My finger hurts
Lovely project and great use of WebGL!
I'd love to see more of this!
this makes me realize how old my 2014 macbook pro is. at least it kinda worked in safari.
It does not work on a iPad Pro.
This sucks!! Just let me walk around with WASD. The scrolling controls suck ass.
Very cool! Thank you
we need similar projects for greek and roman ones
amazing , how they do that ? someone knows ?
not much for words, was he, old xerxes?
This is completely unusable on an iPhobe
Amazing!
This looks amazing but I'd appreciate an autoplay button or free walk + look, the scrollwheel monorail handcranking makes the exploration rather frustrating.
Agreed. The content is great but UX is terrible so I quit early. Scrolling is not a good way to initiate action and is extremely annoying to deal with.
It’s so bad. What a waste of great material.
Arrow keys and page-down don’t work either :/
There’s a set of accessibility options; maybe they could add some alternative navigation methods.
There’s a set of accessibility options; maybe they could add some alternative navigation methods.
Arrow keys work for me. But it's still strange because when you keep it pressed often nothing happens for a time and then abruptly you move too quickly.
Right! It's like a museum with mandatory guided tours.
I agree. What worked for me, was using chrome dev tools, then emulating a tablet so i could drag up/down to 'walk' and sideways to look around.
It's not even working on my phone (Android + chromium), just stuck at 100.
Likewise (tablet).
Tried it on a PC. It's close to useless, unfortunately.
Too bad, these other efforts elsewhere to create 3D models of ancient cities work fine both on a PC and Android tablets.
Tried it on a PC. It's close to useless, unfortunately.
Too bad, these other efforts elsewhere to create 3D models of ancient cities work fine both on a PC and Android tablets.
On some sections you can drag the mouse to change point of view.
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Eternal forced scrolling "powerpoint" HTML slide-show? No, thank you. I have stopped after 3 pages. What is the point of doing this?
Designers, who think that this is a good idea to waste people's time like this, shouldn't be allowed anywhere near computers.
Designers, who think that this is a good idea to waste people's time like this, shouldn't be allowed anywhere near computers.
I think it was good in this case. They wanted to present a guided tour. May be they could have added buttons but this journey was nice overall.
Then just record a video.
Presenting an interactive experience and then taking away all control from the user and replacing it with an extremely frustrating navigation mode (hint, not everyone is using a phone/tablet or laptop touchpad - try to scroll that much with a mouse!) is just stupid and completely wasting the potential of the medium.
Presenting an interactive experience and then taking away all control from the user and replacing it with an extremely frustrating navigation mode (hint, not everyone is using a phone/tablet or laptop touchpad - try to scroll that much with a mouse!) is just stupid and completely wasting the potential of the medium.
Good lord. Have you ever made anything that explored "the potential of the medium" as much as this? What makes you feel equipped to call its creators "stupid"?
Have you ever made anything that explored "the potential of the medium" as much as this?
Yes. Does that matter? This particular work has terrible, user-hostile navigation controls, and needs to support free movement.
We could play Quake 2 in the browser several years ago, so it's not an unreasonable thing to ask for.
Yes. Does that matter? This particular work has terrible, user-hostile navigation controls, and needs to support free movement.
We could play Quake 2 in the browser several years ago, so it's not an unreasonable thing to ask for.
The UI could have been better, but it worked and it was something I’d never seen before and it made my day. Rich web experiences like this are difficult to pull off at all. I’m glad they made it. People who write empty, sneering comments about other people’s hard work shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near computers.
Not for people on mobile phones, none of my Android devices go past the first screen, paging doesn't work at all.
My Android phone was fairly mid range when I bought it, and that was a few years ago (long enough that I don't remember now!) and it works fine for me.
Edit: I should mention that I only tried Chrome
Edit 2: Also tried Firefox on my Android device. It was noticeably slower but still worked.
Edit: I should mention that I only tried Chrome
Edit 2: Also tried Firefox on my Android device. It was noticeably slower but still worked.
Works super smoothly on my Pixel 5 4G.
Excellent work in general!
Excellent work in general!
It needs very unreasonable amount of scrolling.
I keep thinking something must be "wrong" with my scrollwheel, as all those experiences are super annoying but keep getting published by some people. I think it's not as bad if you're on a Mac or something. Anyway, I agree, it's just bad ux
Worked great on Linux/Firefox/Intel graphics with a trackpad for scrolling.
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Funny how they went through that much effort to render everything client side, but then restrict the whole thing to a (quite frustrating) one dimensional control with the scroll wheel. In the end, a pre-rendered video would have worked much better for this UX. Many WebGL "experiences" I see fall into this trap, they want full control of what's shown, wasting their technical effort.
I initially thought that and then i realised i could move my mouse and look around. You are still on a rail, but you can free-lock.
I was able to look around using my phone, but it was still on rails.
Good point ! I'm on firefox on linux, and after 1 min of loading the thing it barely could run on my machine, so I didn't explore every possibility. If you can look around I guess it could be replaced by a 360° video but those are really heavy, probably more than the 3D experience itself.
I would have enjoyed this way more as a game/walking simulator where you can explore this magnificent place at your own pace and discover its secrets.
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It's a bit shit innit
It's a really cool project. Now I want a VR game where I could simply walk around ancient cities and watch people go about their day.