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Virtual Egyptian Tomb (Tomb of Menna)

ggunhouse
Honored Guest


Hi,

My colleague and I at Georgia State University in Atlanta have been experimenting with using the Oculus Rift to provide virtual access to the ancient Egyptian tombs that she studies.

The example provided here takes the most recent and accurate photographic record of the Tomb of Menna, and presents those images in a 3D model of the tomb. The game experience was created with Unity. The version I've attached is for Windows. Please check it out and let us know how it works for you, and what you think might improve the experience.

http://www.medievalist.net/oculusvr/ovrtombofmenna.zip

Thanks,
Glenn

Glenn Gunhouse
Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design
Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA
19 REPLIES 19

jjkramhft
Honored Guest
Great work
It runs fine for me in direct to rift mode, when I add -force-d3d11

ggunhouse
Honored Guest
Thanks for the report. This is the first thing I've made public. I'm glad to hear it actually works for someone outside my office.

pcmason
Honored Guest
That is fantastic! I love ancient Egyptian history! Higher resolution textures allowing you to get up really close to the images would make it perfect. I noticed too that the images at the left and right end walls are the same, I assume you don't have photos of one of the walls. Works perfectly in extended and direct to rift when adding -force-d3d11 too.

ggunhouse
Honored Guest
"pcmason" wrote:
Higher resolution textures allowing you to get up really close to the images would make it perfect. too.

I have higher resolution images, but the size of the images in this model is already really big, and I worry that making them even larger would affect performance. I'll experiment, though.

"pcmason" wrote:
I noticed too that the images at the left and right end walls are the same.

Good catch. I didn't notice that. The texture is correct in the original model, but somehow got changed when the model was imported into Unity. I didn't catch the error before exporting for the Rift. Thanks for letting me know. I have fixed it.

lucyferror
Honored Guest
Great job 🙂 Would love to see more 🙂

bengazi
Honored Guest
I thoroughly enjoyed this! A great way to explore a bit of culture that i'll likely never see in real life. Some Egyptian themed music would greatly improve the experience, although i understand this is just a tech demo.

EddieJames
Explorer
Works great for me in Direct. It would be so awesome to tour the pyramids via rift.
DK2 on ASUS Rampage V i7-5930k @ 3.5ghz, GTX 780ti, 32GB DDR4 RAM, 500GB SSD Win 7 Pro

fris13
Honored Guest
I was getting jutter as well but as someone else mentioned -force-d3d11 fixed it quite nicely.

One suggestion tho. I almost wish that when we stare at certain parts of the paintings that we could get some popup with a description of what we are seeing and what it represents. It would nice to understand better what I am seeing and why you went through the effort of rendering it.

ggunhouse
Honored Guest
"fris13" wrote:
I almost wish that when we stare at certain parts of the paintings that we could get some popup with a description of what we are seeing and what it represents.

Yes, it would be nice to have pop-up labels and info (though there are literally HUNDREDS of things that could be labeled in this tomb). I have made other Unity environments with labels and pop-ups (for example, the Christian building at Dura Europos -http://media.artgallery.yale.edu/duraeuropos/data/christian-building/tour.html). Someday soon I hope to make a Rift version of those.

It would nice to understand better... why you went through the effort of rendering it.

The Unity Web Player version was made to provide virtual access to the tomb for the archaeologist who directed the restoration project (Dr. Melinda Hartwig) and her students. It was designed as a teaching and research tool for scholars who were already familiar with the tomb, but who could not visit it in person. It was a way of disseminating new photographs of the recently restored frescoes, while at the same time allowing them to be viewed in the context of the architecture of the tomb. I thought it would be a good test of the Rift, so it's one of the first things I converted, and the results were way better than I expected.