[HN Gopher] La Basilica Di San Pietro
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La Basilica Di San Pietro
Author : geox
Score : 110 points
Date : 2024-11-20 15:15 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (unlocked.microsoft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (unlocked.microsoft.com)
| oatsandsugar wrote:
| Absolutely gorgeous imagery, and it seems to have a functional
| purpose as well, as a digital twin for structural modeling.
|
| Incredible work.
|
| The work in the related stories are equally gorgeous. Thanks for
| sharing mate.
| regularfry wrote:
| This reminds me _strongly_ of Microsoft Photosynth. Can 't help
| wondering what the lineage between the two looks like.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynth
|
| https://medium.com/@dddexperiments/why-i-preserved-photosynt...
| johnla wrote:
| Yes! I forgot about this but I knew I've seen something very
| similar long ago also by Microsoft. I wonder if any Photosynth
| DNA got into this.
| znpy wrote:
| dumb question: could we, in the future, use some kind of gen ai
| to generate a videogame map (i'm thinking quake 3 arena /
| openarena) of buildings like these ?
|
| (not just the basilica di san pietro)
| jareklupinski wrote:
| we could have these today; the difficult part is getting
| permission to use the building in your work (depending on
| jurisdiction / the work)
| znpy wrote:
| interesting, where would one have to look to learn and/or get
| the necessary data to pull that off?
|
| i might just want to do that for my own private use (or i
| might be okay with law infringement).
| jareklupinski wrote:
| probably start with finding out who owns / manages the
| building you want to use (public record, company reports)
|
| if they like your project and see some value in it for
| themselves, they might even give you the contact of the
| designer / architect to get files
| GTP wrote:
| To further sustain this point: I heard that in the past,
| someone recreated some parts of Politecnico di Milano (a
| famous technical university in Italy) as a map of some open
| source first person shooter. Unfortunately I don't remember
| which shooter it was.
| porphyra wrote:
| Whether you can make reproductions of buildings and public
| interiors is known as "freedom of panorama". Wikimedia
| Commons has a comprehensive list by country [1].
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panora.
| ..
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| It's frustrating to see that the US added architectural
| copyrights in 1990. There's an explicit exemption for
| photographs, but not models.
|
| What problem did this actually solve? If there is one, we
| managed to live with it for the prior two centuries.
| squarefoot wrote:
| I wouldn't care about reproducing existing building as long
| as the AI can generate credible ones in the same style, then
| place them on dynamic worlds created by prompting the AI.
| Having intelligent AI NPCs as long as AI generated scenery
| would be a killer feature in any game. I'm talking about off
| line disconnected single player games; cloud ones with these
| features could be already here, but I want to be in control,
| and marketing rules are against that: who would buy the new
| shiny V2.0 with the new worlds and characters if 1.0 could
| create them just by asking it to? As someone who consumed
| tons of scifi novels and books as a kid and wants to be
| immersed in big worlds, enjoying great stories also in games
| (absolutely loved the Mass Effect saga), I already know
| what's going to happen when we'll be able to feed Philip K.
| Dick or Asimov, Sturgeon, Bova, Silverberg, etc. books to an
| AI and have it create worlds, environments, stories and
| characters straight out of the book descriptions. Literally
| drooling over it.
| cruano wrote:
| It's like that kid that got expelled for creating a map of
| his school in Counter-Strike [1], due to fears of security
| threats. Not that I blame them, I could see people planning a
| robbery in Minecraft.
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2007/05/student-creates-
| count...
| whizzter wrote:
| With players in control any jank will be quite obvious, the
| field did accelerate thanks to neural nets but there seems to
| have been a lot of focus on NeRFs and GS (This interactive demo
| seems to use GS) and classic triangle-geometry (especially
| lower polygon counts) hasn't gotten as much love recently as
| the impressive GS demos has taken over.
|
| But the success of GS and speeding up should rekindle some
| interest and let us use some of the advances in making
| "production ready" methods.
| ninininino wrote:
| One such pipeline that already works today is photogrammetry of
| real place -> voxel data using VoxelPlugin. You can then leave
| it as a Voxel or bake it to a static mesh.
|
| Example:
| https://twitter.com/phyronnaz/status/1549869716826689539
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZbG5JTpSCA
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| I think the biggest challenge is not any of the technical or
| legal problems already mentioned, but that none of these
| buildings are laid out with the primary objective of being fun
| to run around shooting people in. So once the novelty wears
| off, I expect the actual gameplay experience will be rather
| clunky, especially with competitive gamers.
| debo_ wrote:
| This brings back memories of Microsoft's acquisition of
| SeaDragon. At the time they had a really compelling demo (at
| least for me) of reconstructing 3D locations based on a
| smatterings of photos.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seadragon_Software
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFSsTwXLqsc
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| At the time I really thought that was going to be the next
| Street View.
|
| Maybe with WebGL and Gaussian Splats that can still be the
| case. But it's also a ZIRP kind of project. Awesome, but what's
| the business model?
| Oarch wrote:
| Thanks for the memory - definitely one of the coolest demos I'd
| ever seen.
|
| Any idea how accurate the pitch was compared to the reality?
| pluc wrote:
| What does AI have to do with this? They thoroughly scanned the
| thing, where's the need for AI?
| porphyra wrote:
| Photogrammetry has rebranded itself to "Spatial AI".
| whizzter wrote:
| Not an explicit field expert, but pretty well into computer
| graphics(games) and been reading a bunch of papers in the
| field over the years.
|
| Classic photogrammetry was always a mixed bag in terms of
| results (especially if trying to construct meshes), but even
| before NeRFs (Neutral Radiance Fields) and Gaussian Splatting
| there was a ton of work using neural nets to handle various
| parts and I doubt that many modern tools avoid using them.
|
| So in a way, these fields actually made use of neutral
| nets/"AI" (honestly more relevant imho than most of the LLM
| stuff).
| porphyra wrote:
| True, although most of the snazzy NeRF and Gaussian
| Splatting papers still rely on good old COLMAP on the
| backend lol
| reubenmorais wrote:
| I think putting AI front and center in the marketing like this
| is a public relations move by Microsoft to brush up the image
| of AI in the general public.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Seeing a digital version of it in such detail only further
| reinforces how important it is to experience it in person.
|
| Few sights of man-made things have instilled as much awe in me as
| La Basilica Di San Pietro and most of them are also in Rome
| (namely the Pantheon and Moses @ Basilica di San Pietro in
| Vincoli).
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| You can't understand the scale of it until you experience it in
| person. The way I thought of it was that it is a cathedral made
| for giants.
| jajko wrote:
| Exactly. And it was a great marketing tool for catholicism,
| imagine simpler (even if rich) folks came to visit the pope
| and experienced this marvel of medieval construction. You
| feel utterly insignificant on purpose, feeling weak and in
| presence of something much larger is an easy way to more
| faith, a truth valid for all humans across all time.
|
| But to me, despite all of this, there was a lot of sadness in
| that experience - because you _know_ how desperately poor
| common folks were, how instead of building such status mega
| symbol they could have done some proper good. But not for
| church of that era, it was busy fighting for power and money
| of that world and trying to show how above everybody else
| they were.
|
| You can see miniature scale of this in literally every (also
| non-) older European village or town - religious buildings
| have received by far the most funding and care, sometimes
| overshadowing kings castles themselves. Cathedrals were
| always built to impress masses, and this one is just on top
| of the game, by huge margin for good reasons I believe.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > But not for church of that era, it was busy fighting for
| power and money of that world and trying to show how above
| everybody else they were.
|
| Kind of like the church in America today.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > you know how desperately poor common folks were, how
| instead of building such status mega symbol they could have
| done some proper good. But not for church of that era, it
| was busy fighting for power and money of that world and
| trying to show how above everybody else they were.
|
| This is a tired caricature. We live in comfortable times.
| Materially, in many way, we are much more comfortable today
| than kings were back then. The world was different then,
| and it is irresponsible to project anachronistic categories
| onto a period of history that operated differently. And
| that somehow there exists a conflict between building
| magnificent churches and dealing with poverty is simply
| nonsense (indeed, poverty was dealt with through tithing
| and donations and by convents and monasteries with that
| charism; the first hospitals, for example, were founded by
| nuns, hence why in many languages the word for nurse is
| still "sister"). You can do both, hence the _corporal works
| of mercy_ and _spiritual works of mercy_. Magnificent
| churches were not somehow the private property of some
| caricaturish class of clerical villains (who had no heirs,
| legitimate ones, anyway). They were the common patrimony of
| the Church. They were often constructed over long periods
| of time by the people in the community. They gave everyone,
| especially the poor, the possibility of witnessing and
| experiencing beautiful art and architecture that might
| otherwise only be accessible to the very richest of the
| magnates (and I challenge you to find a magnate who owned
| anything as spectacular as St. Peter 's).
|
| (Even today, you hear people ask the silly question "why
| doesn't the Church sell all its artwork and give the money
| to the poor?". If you allow that question to sink in for a
| moment, it becomes clear how preposterously silly it is to
| ask it. So you sell it. Then what? Now, these artworks are
| the property of private collectors or state institutions.
| Is that what you want? And the money: you think that will
| somehow "end poverty"? After food is digested, one's hunger
| returns. Far greater sums have been expended on the poor.
| The poor will always be with us. It is something we must
| continuously deal with. Robbing them of access to beautiful
| artwork, and depriving the Catholic faithful of their
| patrimony, is a pretty shitty solution, if it can even be
| called that.)
|
| Frankly, what I find shameful is that we are richer than
| we're ever been, and yet we can't seem to produce
| _anything_ that approaches the beauty of these old
| cathedrals. We have monks in Wyoming who are using CNC
| stone carving to build a gothic monastery[0], for crying
| out loud! We 've never been in a better position to build
| beautiful things and cheaply at scale. And that's kind of
| the message of these buildings. It's not the material
| wealth per se, but the magnanimity of spirit that made this
| beauty possible and the spiritual awe it continues to
| inspire to this day. It's a condemnation of our vulgarity,
| of our consumerism. Even the churches we build today
| usually look like shit. If that's not cultural decadence, I
| don't know what is.
|
| [0] https://carmelitegothic.com/cnc-stone-carving/
| rvnx wrote:
| It's also a symbol of all the money and gold, the real values
| and the secrets of the church...
|
| If God exists, you think he would want you to sacrifice and
| spend it all on gold and salaries of locals ?
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Clearly yes if we go by the Bible. Then we should be happy
| to get away with just gold and labor and not our children
| like Isaac.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| Interesting that people may experience it differently, but to
| me it was a bit of a letdown, somehow it felt larger than the
| human scale, so maybe impressive as a technical feat, but also
| somewhat boring, more intimidating than moving -- I was more
| touched by some of the others in Rome that you mention. But to
| me the ultimate awe-inspiring church was the Basilica of Assisi
| that felt just perfect in proportion and design.
| twelvechairs wrote:
| Yes. Impressive tech but the website is ultimately not a great
| experience. You don't get the detail, the texture, the light,
| the human scale etc. Instead you get bits of wire frame,
| stuttering, odd flying movements, anti-aliasing issues etc. And
| a forced narrative along the side.
| einpoklum wrote:
| So this is one of the vanity project Microsoft undertakes using
| the vast amounts of money it makes off of proprietary software?
| littlekey wrote:
| You don't see any value in this project? I certainly do.
| lancesells wrote:
| Microsoft was bummed that they couldn't acquire it so they
| recreated it in 3D.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| I sometimes wonder why they don't just sell the whole thing
| to a real estate developer or something.
|
| If inornate churches that look more like strip malls and expo
| centers are so much better for the laity then imagine how
| much more good it would do for the top brass, relieving them
| of the burden of having to look at all that sacred art all
| day long. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
| Miraste wrote:
| In fairness, the Catholic church is not the sect building
| strip mall churches.
| porphyra wrote:
| A lot of advances during the Renaissance happened due to some
| vanity projects of the Medici family (e.g. funding Galileo
| Galilei and Brunelleschi's Dome).
| treve wrote:
| Chrome-based browsers only I presume :')
| ygra wrote:
| Works fine in Firefox for me.
| sangeeth96 wrote:
| Direct link to the virtual tour:
| https://virtual.basilicasanpietro.va/en
| elif wrote:
| Okay can we please play quake in this map now?
| johnla wrote:
| This might actually be an awesome use case.
| antimatter15 wrote:
| Looking at the source code with web inspector it seems to be
| powered by 3D gaussian splatting and BabylonJS (https://doc.babyl
| onjs.com/features/featuresDeepDive/mesh/gau...).
| mistercheph wrote:
| It's not preserved until the data and source code are open, I'm
| sure these corporate exercises are impressive to potential
| clients, but they have absolutely nothing to do with preserving,
| studying, or expanding access to art and culture.
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