[HN Gopher] Persepolis of ancient Persia rendered in WebGL
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Persepolis of ancient Persia rendered in WebGL
Author : avestura
Score : 767 points
Date : 2022-04-09 04:52 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (persepolis.getty.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (persepolis.getty.edu)
| westoncb wrote:
| 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.
| mmphosis wrote:
| What if I am using a mouse without a scroll wheel?
| djKianoosh wrote:
| I would guess arrow keys?
| mmphosis wrote:
| The arrow keys don't work. The scroll bar doesn't work.
| Having to use a scroll wheel or swipe continually is a
| pain.
| LeanderK wrote:
| 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.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| 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.
| sytelus wrote:
| On iPad things get stuck at the stairs.
| gilgoomesh wrote:
| Same on my iPhone
| gilgoomesh wrote:
| I reloaded a few times and got past it. Load lag? Site
| overwhelmed. Unsure.
| berkut wrote:
| 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?
| mordae wrote:
| I guess to reduce banding and soften shadow edges. Specifically
| the glossy floors would probably look much worse without it.
| krautsourced wrote:
| 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...
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| > 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...
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| All of the interior is rendered black. I can only see silhouettes
| of things. It seems to be broken.
| choward wrote:
| Horrible UI but would be cool otherwise. On an Android and the
| performance was fine but way too much finger swiping.
| zackmorris wrote:
| 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.
| tarsinge wrote:
| On a laptop with trackpad it was enjoyable for me.
| lelandfe wrote:
| 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.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The button in the upper right pops out a map where you can
| re-enter a section.
| connicpu wrote:
| 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
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Yeah, I'm on mobile and gave up less than a minute in.
| andretti1977 wrote:
| 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?
| truly wrote:
| 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).
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Approx 20% of gdp of the Achaemenid empire x 200 years.
| behiri wrote:
| 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.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| 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.
| nigerian1981 wrote:
| There are surviving examples such as the Archer at the Louvre
| [1]
|
| [1]https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010210299
| swiftcoder wrote:
| 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...
| skogweb wrote:
| Worked incredibly on my mac! A bit annoying to navigate by
| scroll, but nevertheless amazing in my opinion.
| aborsy wrote:
| Amazing!
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| 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 360deg video, at
| the cost of even more bandwidth.
| haswell wrote:
| 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.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > 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.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| digitallyfree wrote:
| 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.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| To be fair, they could be doing this already, I haven't dug
| in to see how much is dynamic.
| LeftHandPath wrote:
| 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.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| 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
| 360deg stream. (They would still need to send a slightly
| larger FOV than the viewport for their little mouse look
| effect.)
| purpleidea wrote:
| 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.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| 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.
| wookieelover wrote:
| 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.
| loudouncodes wrote:
| Beautiful, but why this design trend of breaking the semantics of
| scrolling?
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| 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.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| My kingdom for basic WASD controls and mouselook
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| 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.
| IshKebab wrote:
| 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.
| westoncb wrote:
| 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.
| kroltan wrote:
| 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.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > 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.
| kroltan wrote:
| > 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.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| 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)
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I don't know how spinning the scroll wheel until my finger
| hurts is "immersive", but ok
| uuyi wrote:
| Pity us poor fools trying to use a touchpad on this. My
| fingers nearly caught fire.
| kzrdude wrote:
| 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.
| larusso wrote:
| 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.
| M4v3R wrote:
| > 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.
| larusso wrote:
| 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.
| lekevicius wrote:
| 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.
| evilturnip wrote:
| 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
| krautsourced wrote:
| If you play Elden Ring and get to the Southeastern Palace
| scene... :)
| xaedes wrote:
| Nice stuff, but that scrolling navigation? Well I am gonna send
| you bills of my doctor.
| azaras wrote:
| 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 Merida...
|
| If a tenth of the money spend in games were spend in make such a
| projects...
| fragkakis wrote:
| 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-...
| stevebmark wrote:
| This is completely unusable on an iPhobe
| ar7hur wrote:
| I visited Persepolis in 2016 -- having this experience before the
| actual visit would have been incredible!
| ehsankia wrote:
| 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
| andydd wrote:
| It's sad how much has been stolen and kept in western
| museums. Just look at what's in the British Museum in
| London...
| xyzzy4 wrote:
| Well isn't it better to safeguard things in the British
| Museum than let them get lost forever?
| satao wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| xyzzy4 wrote:
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| > 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.
| benbreen wrote:
| 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.
| bin_bash wrote:
| Yep. Better stolen than destroyed if you ask me.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan
| bobdupneu wrote:
| 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.
| eternalban wrote:
| 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.
| fit2rule wrote:
| UberFly wrote:
| 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.
| truly wrote:
| 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?
| paines wrote:
| Looks like some some custom 3d CAD software they used to
| produce 3d models:
|
| http://www.persepolis3d.com/service.htm
| gigel82 wrote:
| My finger hurts
| san_amiro wrote:
| very cool! does anyone remember Microsoft Encarta? they had
| something similar where you can walk in Persepolis and interact
| with it.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| In Our Time has an episode on Persepolis [0]. Great episode of a
| great podcast.
|
| 0 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b4z075
| ackbar03 wrote:
| There are a few videos on youtube of Iran in the old days and it
| seemed like quite a beautiful place
| kzrdude wrote:
| 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!
| reacharavindh wrote:
| 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 !
| the_af wrote:
| 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".
| janoc wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| playpause wrote:
| 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.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Not for people on mobile phones, none of my Android devices
| go past the first screen, paging doesn't work at all.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| 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.
| mazswojejzony wrote:
| Works super smoothly on my Pixel 5 4G.
|
| Excellent work in general!
| ElephantsMyAnus wrote:
| It needs very unreasonable amount of scrolling.
| lecarore wrote:
| 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
| kzrdude wrote:
| Worked great on Linux/Firefox/Intel graphics with a trackpad
| for scrolling.
| smusamashah wrote:
| 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.
| janoc wrote:
| 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.
| playpause wrote:
| 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"?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _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.
| silveira wrote:
| It does not work on a iPad Pro.
| azangru wrote:
| I really dislike the "scroll to continue" UI. Buttons would have
| worked much better!
| umen wrote:
| amazing , how they do that ? someone knows ?
| ar_imani wrote:
| I visited Persepolis several times. Saw lots of images and
| illustrations, but this one is the coolest. Thank you.
| dvh wrote:
| Scrolling broken on my phone. Stop hijacking the scrolling
| damnit.
| paines wrote:
| It's part of the experience man. Scrolling down is used to
| simulate a movement forward like walking thru the scenery....
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| 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.
| hakre wrote:
| I wonder when the first crack comes out for WASD + free
| movement.
| [deleted]
| globalise83 wrote:
| 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!
| LeftHandPath wrote:
| 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.
| imiric wrote:
| 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
| arcticbull wrote:
| Started hitting 5fps around Royal Feasts on my M1 Pro machine and
| I had to bail out, but otherwise, really spectacular.
| supermatt wrote:
| weird - its very smooth for me on my non-pro 8GB m1 in
| safari...
| moron4hire wrote:
| 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.
| arcticbull wrote:
| 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.
| tanbog10 wrote:
| It was unwatchable for me on a recent lenovo and an Australian
| internet connection. Sounds cool though.
| tommica wrote:
| Didn't work on my android, but on my PC this is an amazing
| experience!
| pjmlp wrote:
| Doesn't work at all on latest Chrome on Android.
| lecarore wrote:
| 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.
| supermatt wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| larschdk wrote:
| 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.
| dave84 wrote:
| I was able to look around using my phone, but it was still on
| rails.
| lecarore wrote:
| 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 360deg video but those are
| really heavy, probably more than the 3D experience itself.
| a1371 wrote:
| 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
| macinjosh wrote:
| 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.
| everyone wrote:
| This sucks!! Just let me walk around with WASD. The scrolling
| controls suck ass.
| ad-astra wrote:
| Cool stuff. Got stuck in the Accessibility Settings on my iPhone
| 12 Mini, the touch target didn't register for some reason.
| cma wrote:
| The scrollwheel trend needs to go away. It isn't smooth at all
| with a wheel on desktop.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| 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.
| EnderWT wrote:
| The Down key also works.
| replygirl wrote:
| soon they'll be on par with the 3d coliseum from encarta 2002
| [deleted]
| hakre wrote:
| 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.
| yardshop wrote:
| 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.
| dymk wrote:
| Very cool!
|
| Unfortunately, half the comments will be a shallow dismissal
| about the scrolling, but that's typical HN.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| I have a 12 pro max and the scrolling part is stuttering a lot.
| Almost unusable 5-10 fps.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Ran buttery smooth on my OnePlus 9 Pro.
| shaded-enmity wrote:
| This looks amazing but I'd appreciate an autoplay button or free
| walk + look, the scrollwheel monorail handcranking makes the
| exploration rather frustrating.
| colordrops wrote:
| It's not even working on my phone (Android + chromium), just
| stuck at 100.
| Tor3 wrote:
| 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.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Right! It's like a museum with mandatory guided tours.
| vitejose wrote:
| Arrow keys and page-down don't work either :/
|
| There's a set of accessibility options; maybe they could add
| some alternative navigation methods.
| pragmatick wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| tauwauwau wrote:
| On some sections you can drag the mouse to change point of
| view.
| molmalo wrote:
| 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.
| manigandham wrote:
| 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.
| darkteflon wrote:
| It's so bad. What a waste of great material.
| nomercy400 wrote:
| This reminds me of Encarta. Encyclopedia on a cd-rom, with audio,
| video and images on many subjects, all clickable.
| rovek wrote:
| 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.
| emerged wrote:
| Is any company still producing that type of encyclopedia
| experience? Wikipedia has information / links / pictures, but
| it doesn't have that type of immersion.
| millerm wrote:
| 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.
| elliekelly wrote:
| 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.
| de-asis-kevin wrote:
| 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
| pabbasian wrote:
| could be fun if it was a bit lighter and let people navigate
| through with keys
| neycoda wrote:
| This ran pretty well on a Galaxy S10 in Chrome.
| mrbonner wrote:
| 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!
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| 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.
| brianguertin wrote:
| Like this? https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/assassins-
| creed/discovery...
| [deleted]
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| It's a bit shit innit
| bbu wrote:
| this makes me realize how old my 2014 macbook pro is. at least it
| kinda worked in safari.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| This is really cool. Seeing these beautiful colors I realize how
| much how I imagine the ancient world is shaped by museum
| artifacts and photos in textbooks, which show raw and
| brown/grey/white stones, rusty tools and weapons. I've grown
| thinking about pre-medieval times as a landscape of ruins. It
| would be like if future humans were picturing our current world
| as nothing but bombed cities.
|
| 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.
| holoduke wrote:
| 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.
| behnamoh wrote:
| 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.
| simplicio wrote:
| 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)
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _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
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| In aegyptus they'd be sort of right. The Egyptian ruins were
| as old to them as Roman ruins are to us.
| leeoniya wrote:
| "This video contains content from Fremantle International,
| who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds"
| vanderZwan wrote:
| 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
| flyinglizard wrote:
| Assassins Creed gives you that everyday historical vibe very
| well. Highly recommend.
| UberFly wrote:
| 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.
| phasersout wrote:
| Can recommend Origins as well, riding past the pyramids has
| something pretty cool about it...
| junon wrote:
| 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.
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| 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...
| fnord123 wrote:
| Crikey the Royal Exchange is a crater.
| stavros wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing, "I thought these civilizations
| only built ruins".
| cm2187 wrote:
| 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.
| coryrc wrote:
| That's not quite correct. Concrete is basic and
| prevents/slows the rusting of metal reinforcement, but not
| forever and it's made less effective with rising CO2
| levels.
| jchanimal wrote:
| But we'll still be using XML.
| [deleted]
| psyklic wrote:
| 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...
| tommica wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this, never knew these existed - gonna be
| great to go through them!
| whermans wrote:
| 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.
| benbreen wrote:
| 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
| whermans wrote:
| I visited Persepolis (and the tombs) in Spring 2019.
| farzher wrote:
| this is the worst experience ever on a gaming mouse that scrolls
| 1 tick at a time
| claudiuhl wrote:
| we need similar projects for greek and roman ones
| dev912 wrote:
| The scrolling bothered me and I had to stop, but I did enjoy what
| I saw.
| offminded wrote:
| Terrible UX but the concept is cool.
| ByThyGrace wrote:
| It's giving me heavy flicker on Firefox when I "scroll" and the
| camera moves. Lots of solid black frames.
| kibwen wrote:
| Same for me, but only on the first page where it's flying
| into the city, the rest of the pages are flawless.
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