Paris Past and Present is a project of Professor Cohen’s that will make a 3D reconstruction of medieval Paris. It started last Spring Quarter and I joined this Fall. I am starting to learn how to use Vectorworks, but the other students, who include Tori and Haley, have already made the Galerie des Merciers at the Palais de la Cité (pictured above) and are working on the Lady Chapel of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. There is going to be a class next Spring Quarter to work on the project, but you can join before then!
I don’t know a whole lot about the project so far, but it looks like the process-based questions and product-based questions that Lisa M. Snyder discusses in “Virtual Reality for Humanities Scholarship” are fairly balanced. Each category is or will be addressed with different software. Vectorworks is being used for making the reconstructions and learning how the buildings were built, and Cinema 4D might be used in the future to present the models with better rendering and fly throughs. If I’m remembering correctly, Alec was working on the floorplan of the Lady Chapel and found that the measurements on the outside and inside of the building (somewhere around the transitional bays around the apse) were different. The emphasis is really on learning things about how these buildings were made that you couldn’t learn in any other way. By reconstructing a building, you can get into the mind of the architect.
At the end of her article, Snyder discusses how students have much higher expectations of virtual reality since they have so much more exposure to 3d graphics. Diane Favro addresses the same issue in “Meaning in Motion: A Personal Walk Through Historical Simulation Modeling at UCLA.” Snyder points to students’ ability to distinguish between the scholarly value of less visually impressive academic VR projects and 3d graphics made for movies and computer games, while Favro notes the exact opposite. Maybe student responses were different because of the way the projects were presented. Snyder’s projects are more process-based and the 3d models set up more modest expectations, while Favro’s projects are more product-based and set up higher expectations by being presented in the high-tech, theater-like Visualization Portal that promises kinetic experiences.
I think there could be a middle ground presentation that is both immersive and relatively affordable. In 1993, the groundbreaking computer game Myst was able to create an immersive environment with static 3d graphics and MUD-style movement (click on the left side to turn left, click on the center to go forward, etc.). Static images can be more finely detailed than images rendered on-the-fly, and the composition of each image can also be controlled to give the player the most beautiful and/or informative view. The sense of immersion came from the combination of comparatively better detail and the imposition of a slower pace that encouraged paying attention to particular views for longer periods of time.