![]() “Being out there with the heat and the desert sun, it’s a real tactile sense of the Giza experience,’’ Manuelian said. “It gives a more rounded picture that no PowerPoint lecture can bring across.’’īut it will never be a true substitute for seeing the Pyramids with your own eyes. That’s something no human can do,’’ Manuelian said. We can go into burial grounds and rotate around in the bedrock underground. “We can visit rooms and go above ground and below ground. He takes his students on guided 3-D tours through Giza using a joystick controller. Just building a single ornate chair in the virtual environment, he said, could take a month.Īt Harvard, where Manuelian is now a professor of Egyptology, the project has become a regular part of his classes. The application includes at least 30 objects that have been painstaking rebuilt in 3-D, including stone vessels and statues that can be examined in detail. Ten software engineers built Giza 3D, Tayoubi said - often a laborious process. Some of the recreations are based on photos from the Harvard-MFA excavation, showing the same bones, pieces of wooden coffins, and stone formations it found. As users navigate through the chambers, they can click on items to get historical information, or see copies of excavation documents. It includes hundreds of tombs that users can explore, historically accurate hieroglyphics to examine, and the ability to take in 360-degree views of the Pyramids or their interiors. Giza 3D allows virtual explorers to roam around the Giza Plateau and dive deep under the Pyramids. In 2010, the MFA and Dassault decided to create a virtual exhibit from the collection of more than 85,000 digitized photographs, maps, and drawings. At the time, Manuelian was director of the MFA’s Giza Archives Project, which digitized the archeological records from a joint MFA and Harvard University excavation that ran from 1902 to 1947. The company’s work on that project caught the attention of Peter Der Manuelian, a prominent Egyptologist, in 2008. “We said that if we can use 3-D technology to help industry, we could use it to recreate archeology,’’ said Mehdi Tayoubi, vice president of digital and experiential strategy for Dassault. But in 2005, the French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin began working with the company on a 3-D simulation illustrating the building of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the largest of the three at Giza. “This is the next best thing’’ to being there, she said.ĭassault software is typically used to design and manufacture products for carmakers, architects, and consumer electronic companies. “It’s dizzying,’’ said Maggie Geoga, a 21-year-old Harvard senior, although she added it is worth the discomfort. Just like the virtual motion rides at amusement parks, the digital tour through Giza can leave viewers a bit queasy as it takes quick twists and turns into the pyramid corridors. The virtual tour is also being used in Harvard University’s 3-D virtual reality theater, where Egyptology students can be immersed in the simulation.
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