Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

There has to be a point where seeing things in the virtual world becomes "good enough" that we won't fly thousands of miles to do it.

When I see some of the virtual reconstructions of Ancient Rome or Pompeii, I wonder if the real thing will be of less interest than the reconstituted, repaired one.

I think this is normal - there are now billions of people in the world and only so much "great art". I was in a huge crowd looking at the Mona Lisa. There was nothing magical about the experience. I'd rather have my own copy or put my VR glasses on and enjoy it in, say, the house where it was first displayed.

I can see museums fearing the loss of visitors or at least fearing that someone else will make billions out of virtualising it and they won't. I mean, search engines make billions out of the knowledge other people built over centuries. AI takes open source information and code and makes billions selling the embodied knowledge that was given away for free. It's not as if corporations aren't happy to rape the commons and call themselves heroes for doing it.

This isn't a good reason for the museum's attitude but I don't look to the future free exploitation of public information with unalloyed optimism.

> There has to be a point where seeing things in the virtual world becomes "good enough" that we won't fly thousands of miles to do it.

For certain things, I could see that. But for many things I go see, it's being there that is part of the point. Knowing that I'm seeing or touching the actual thing the artist saw and touched, or standing in a place where the builders worked build it, etc. Seeing a perfect representation misses that.

It probably depends a lot on personality. For myself, I obsessively studied space exploration history as a child. When I was much older, I toured National Air and Space Museum in District of Columbia and found it terribly boring, no new knowledge, nothing I hadn't read about before.

I half agree, but I've been to a few of these things and it's all somewhat debatable because you're not really supposed to touch, or there are millions of people and you can't just sit and enjoy, or you don't know enough about them to understand deeply what you are seeing.

Ruined cities really don't look or feel anything like what they were. You miss an incredible amount by not being able to see them as the inhabitants would have. On the other hand you see the countryside and when that hasn't changed (e.g. the sea moving out) you get a feeling of context but .... even that is odd when the original people that lived there are long gone and a totally different culture has supplanted them. You smell the smells of the plants at least and that's good.

OTOH I can imagine the virtual part of this becoming incredibly good - with smell and touch even. Imagine lying in your Roman house in Pompeii and eating dinner while reclining. Listening to the street noise outside while enjoying the garden in your courtyard? I can imagine putting yourself inside the historical context to a degree that would require an extreme feat of imagination in the real place.

With paintings it's just the crowd, often being on your feet and the comical way in which one's favorite painting turns out to be tiny in real life and much worse than the print for that reason.

I can see your point of view. It definitely is going to depend on what you are going for. I've never gone to a museum for knowledge. I enjoyed the Smithsonian (though, aside from a few specific artifacts, I really prefer Udvar-Hazy to the museum on the mall) solely because of the feeling I got being in the presence of the actual machines that I've learned so much about. Reading about Glamorous Glennis or the Enola Gay is one thing, but to stand in front of it and think "that right there is the actual plane Chuck Yeager flew past mach 1" is 100% of why I go to the museum.

> Ruined cities really don't look or feel anything like what they were. You miss an incredible amount by not being able to see them as the inhabitants would have.

Oh I totally agree with this! And I'd say it applies similarly to modern cities. I find it sort of hilarious to go somewhere like London which has a huge amount of historical architecture, but so surrounded by modernity that you get a little whiplash every time you turn around.

I have to get as close as I can to what I'm looking at, preferably close enough to mostly shut out the existence of everyone around, the noise, etc.

I think you make very good points. I would love the virtual experience that tried to show what it was really like at the time these artifacts were created. I'd still enjoy the part about seeing it all in person, though, because that's just me -- being in the presence of the physical object really sparks my imagination. So ... I want both options, please.

Some people have of course tried to do something like this. I specifically remember some video about getting street noise right... I think it was for that Assassin's Creed game set in Paris ?

Related :

https://youtu.be/NbETq6owNmc

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1341280/NotreDame_de_Pari...