Stephen White wrote:

> I'm trying to find out if any British museum is considering creating
> an online database of their collections. My own area of interest is
> Classical Archaeology and I think a database containing artefacts in
> VRML would greatly enhance the interpretative process. I know of
> several projects well under way in the US but as yet I've not been
> able to find any here in Britain.

Stephen,

I am also doing research into the viability of web-3d technologies for
cultural heritage applications, and sent a similar request for
information to this list a while back -- your message has reminded me
that I promised to share my findings...

At present, it seems there is not very much in terms of 3-D UK museum
information on the web -- 3-D scanning or modelling is still relatively
esoteric (and therefore quite expensive).

As far as I can tell, the UK museum that has done the most with 3-D on
the web is the Natural History Museum, who have produced some Virtual
Reality Modelling Language (VRML) fossils using laser scanning
technology, and have produced Quicktime VR (QTVR) movies of a computer
reconstruction of the Endeavour (URL's below).

According to the Virtual Library Museum Pages, the Museum of Science &
Industry have also done some QTVR and VRML; I found the QTVR, but not
the VRML, although I was on a slow modem and therefore wasn't being
especially thorough.

Other than that UK-wise, there are a few more small pilots around, but
so far that's about all I've come up with.

Some other URL's you might want to investigate are below; again, thanks
to David Dawson for some useful leads:


UK Stuff
-------

Natural History Museum,
Virtual Endeavour
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/VRendeavour/index.htm
VR Fossils
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/museum/tempexhib/VRML/online.html
--This seems to be the cutting edge in UK terms at least

Museum of Science & Industry, Manchester
http://www.msim.org.uk/
--QTVR of stores, and apparently some VRML...

The Chester Project
http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/julianbaum/tcp.shtml
--Forthcoming reconstruction of the Legionary Fortress at Chester during
the mid-third century.

EDVEC (Edinburgh Virtual Environment Centre)
http://www.edvec.ed.ac.uk/

NVRCAD
http://nvrcad.coventry.ac.uk/
NVRCAD Virtual Ceramics Homepage
http://www.esad.plym.ac.uk/NVRCAD/projects/ceramics/
--The National Virtual Reality Centres for Art & Design are funded by
the Higher Education Funding Councils

Virtual Gallery of the Muses
HTTP://MUSES.CALLIGRAFIX.CO.UK
--I seem to remember this one being more like a game


Non-UK VRML Examples
---------------------

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Constantin Brancusi's Mademoiselle Pogany
http://www.narrativerooms.com/pogany/vr/index_a.html

Abulafia VRML Gallery
http://www.cgrg.ohio-state.edu/~mlewis/Gallery/vrml.html

Rosetti VRML
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~dfa4y/dgr/

Museo Casa de la Moneda
http://www.fnmt.es/esp/museo/evisita.htm

Virtual Music Museum
http://www.musiknet.se/musikmuseum/sve/index.html


Quicktime VR & Other Stuff
------------------------

Virtual Museum of Arts El Pais
http://www.diarioelpais.com/muva2/
--No VRML or QTVR, but good nonetheless

Diego Rivera Web Museum
http://www.diegorivera.com/visi.html
--also some VRML that doesn't work with Cosmoplayer 2.1

Knoll Virtual Museum
http://www.knoll.com/DesignCenter/Museum.html
--Just a 3-D advert really

Leonardo da Vinci
http://www.mos.org/leonardo/qtvr.html

Revealing Things - Smithsonian Without Walls
http://www.si.edu/revealingthings/back_pages/index.html
--Interesting; maps concepts and relationships in 3-D

Stone Pages
http://joshua.micronet.it/utenti/dmeozzi/Scotland/Inglese/QTVR.html
--QTVR movies of megalithic sites



Cheers,

T.
--------------------
Tony Gill
[log in to unmask]





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