> 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.
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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.