Tour African Monuments Online 11
Cherita Chen writes "Heinz Ruther, professor of Geomatics at the University of Cape Town, looks to provide a "Virtual tour of Africa's heritage". http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4507454.st m "Africans will soon be able to take an online tour of the continent's major world heritage sites like Great Zimbabwe, the rock-hewn St Giyorgis church at Lalibella in Ethiopia and the great mosque of Djenne in Mali.""
Geomatics? (Score:4, Informative)
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: a science concerned with using mathematical methods on data about the earth's surface
Usage: science
kill the angle. (Score:3, Insightful)
for example, from TFA:
"It's going to be a scholarly database - it won't just be pretty pictures," he said.
well, i would damn well hope so. the aim here isn't tourism. this stuff isn't going to be used primarily for a 3D tour at visitmali.com. the digital imaging being done at these sites is rescue archaeological work, aimed at preserving these bits of history for future generations of students and scholars far into the future.
granted, some of the money now going to laser scanning and photogrammetry might be better used shoring up the preservation funding the article takes care to mention is lacking, letting these monuments disintegrate, but preserving them in replicable digital form will make them accessible to people who might want to study these works long after they've crumbled or been bombed into dust.
A good use of 1st person shooter engines (Score:2)
why go there at all if you can watch it on TV? (Score:2)
Re:why go there at all if you can watch it on TV? (Score:3, Informative)
geat idea... (Score:1)
I will never travel there to see any of them, because going there would violate one of the first rules of safe international travel for Americans: Never go anywhere on the entire continent of Africa. This rule is only second to an even more important rule: Never travel to a country whose name ends in -stan.
Egyptian Pyramid Tour Starts Here! (Score:3, Funny)
Science or religion? (Score:2)
I sure hope it includes some other sites- given how American politics has infected science lately, this whole datatabase could be criticized for being more religious than scientific.....
Two suggestions (Score:2)
Second, World Wind. Don't reinvent the wheel. World Wind is the perfect browser for this type of information.