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Persepolis of ancient Persia rendered in WebGL

persepolis.getty.edu

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Re: Persepolis of ancient Persia rendered in WebGL

#111

Post by fnord123 »

shadowofneptune wrote: post #110
stackbutterflow wrote: post #37

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 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...

Crikey the Royal Exchange is a crater.

Re: Persepolis of ancient Persia rendered in WebGL

#112

Post by gigglesupstairs »

loudouncodes wrote: post #109

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.

Re: Persepolis of ancient Persia rendered in WebGL

#115

Post by westoncb »

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.

Re: Persepolis of ancient Persia rendered in WebGL

#116

Post by thaumasiotes »

LeanderK wrote: post #72

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.

Re: Persepolis of ancient Persia rendered in WebGL

#117

Post by satao »

xyzzy4 wrote: post #92
andydd wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

Re: Persepolis of ancient Persia rendered in WebGL

#118

Post by IshKebab »

gigglesupstairs wrote: post #112
loudouncodes wrote: post #109

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.

Re: Persepolis of ancient Persia rendered in WebGL

#119

Post by heavenlyblue »

loudouncodes wrote: post #109

Beautiful, but why this design trend of breaking the semantics of scrolling?

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.

Re: Persepolis of ancient Persia rendered in WebGL

#120

Post by gunfighthacksaw »

satao wrote: post #117
xyzzy4 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well isn’t it better to safeguard things in the British Museum than let them get lost forever?

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.

> 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.

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