First Chinese 3D Virtual Tourism Site - Virtual Forbidden Palace
What did I do over the long weekend? Touring in the Forbidden City, literally. Last Friday, IBM launched the first Chinese 3D virtual tourism platform - Beyond Space and Time (The Virtual Forbidden City). In partnership with the Forbidden Palace Museum, IBM invested 3 years of time and over 3 million dollars to re-construct a 3 dimensional replica of the world largest Imperial Palace standing today, the Forbidden City of China. The Forbidden City was built from 1406 to 1420, consists of 980 surviving buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms and covers 720,000 square metres. It is also the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world.
Similar to the Great Wall of China, Forbidden City has been the one of the "must see" tourism places in China. I have been there a dozen of times since age of 3. The Virtual Forbidden City enables visitors to interact with others and with a growing knowledge base of the historical site. Learning materials are being generated by tourists, volunteers, staff and data collecting scripts. As they explore the Virtual Forbidden City, visitors can choose to simply observe the buzz of activity, participate in activities that provide insights into important aspects of the Chinese history, or even take guided tours that uncover new insights into the stories of the Forbidden City. It's a combination of 3D Simulation and Machinima experience in my opinion. There are also a few mini-games embedded in the exotic gardens and amazing architectures to keep the audiences entertained.
Registration
To get started, go to the Registration Page to get an account and an avatar icon. This will allow you to save, share your virtual tourism experience with others. Your avatar can take the form of any of several people dressed in Qing era clothing.
Download and Start the Tour!
Upon the completion of the simple registration process, you will be lead to a page that allows you to download the software which will run the Virtual Forbidden City tour on your computer. Please note, you don't have to have an registered account, you may visit it as a guest after install the software.
The following are some photos taken by the virtual tourists and shared over the web. There are much more to it than a simple walk through. I encourage you to try out the platform yourself. It's free, and best yet, no advertisement attached to it "yet" (other than the IBM trademark everywhere of course). It's a really effective way to refresh your memory or give you a sneak preview of the amazing palace!
