So you can click on anything you come across - say, a tomb - and immediately access all that digitized information. But Harvard and the MFA insist this has an educational purpose, too: it's linked to the Giza Archive Project, a massive digital database of materials gathered during a decades-long joint Harvard-MFA expedition of the Giza Plateau. It is a little dizzying, and it's all very whiz-bang. "And I'll take you down, all the way to the bottom. "And I'm going to drive with my mouse and I'll try not to crash into the walls," Manuelian pledged. Service des Antiquites excavations: looking NW to Khufu and Khafre pyramids from limestone knoll S of Muslim cemetery. Suddenly, with a flick of the joystick, we plunge into a long shaft that leads to a burial chamber. Then we swoop down into a courtyard to see an ancient Egyptian burial ceremony. We start by flying over the whole complex, getting a bird's-eye view. We can dive down a burial shaft, we can visit the pyramid." "So it's not a linear movie or a frozen video, where I start at the beginning and go to the end. "I can steer anywhere I want to go," he explained. Manuelian leads our tour with a device that's a cross between a joystick and a mouse. It's an animated computer rendering of the Giza Plateau, home to the famous pyramids near modern-day Cairo. "So what we're seeing, then, is the Great Pyramid and its temples and long causeway, and the sun is going down to the west," Manuelian said. (Courtesy)Īnd with that, I get a taste of what anyone with an Internet connection and 3D TV will soon be able to experience. "So put the glasses on, and then push the button," he instructed, "and if the image gets a little darker, you'll know that things are working." Animated image of a tomb at the Giza pyramids in Egypt, taken from the new interactive website that allows users to take a virtual tour of the pyramids and learn about objects Harvard archaeologists discovered in them. In a classroom with a curved floor-to-ceiling screen, he gave me some fancy battery-operated 3-D glasses. He's been fascinated by ancient Egypt ever since fourth-grade history, and he eventually turned that childhood fascination into a profession: he's Harvard's full-time Egyptologist. Manuelian is one of the brains behind this project, called Giza 3D. "This is as close as I'll ever come, but it's great fun." "I don't play video games," Peter Der Manuelian said with a laugh. Beginning Tuesday, they're offering you a free 3D virtual tour of the ancient pyramids of Egypt. Researchers at Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts are turning it into a learning tool, too. From right to left: Peter Der Manuelian, Harvard Egyptologist Sacha Pfeiffer, WBUR Mehdi Tayoubi, Dassault Systemes Maggie Geoga, Harvard student, in the Harvard University Visualization Center, known as the ' cave.' (Lynn Jolicoeur/WBUR)ģD has become all the rage in movies and computer games, but the technology isn't just for entertainment. Twitter facebook Email This article is more than 10 years old.
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