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Zhang Fei Temple Digitally Remastered
gtaylor writes: "The Globe and Mail reports that the Three Gorges Zhang Fei Temple in China will be disassembled before the Three Gorges dam is completed (which will flood the area where the temple stands now), and reassembled somewhere drier. Meanwhile, the Canadian National Research Council has sent over some techs who have scanned the whole complex into super-accurate 3-D models as to be sure of rebuilding the temples precisely as they were."
be nice if they could just scan the whole damn and build that somewhere else.
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Although they had to do something as far as their river control problem, this might not have been the best solution
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The Three Gorges Dam sucks whether they can restore this temple or not. Millions of people have to move out of the way of the dam, and the government isn't helping them very much.
Just like the people who cared about the Buddha statues in Afghanistan, and got the U.N. to protest at levels unheard of since the Taliban came in, the int'l community opposes the dam because of the archeological wonders, not as much the people.
Digital aids in solutions to the problems of the Three Gorges Dam are oriented towards the preservation of a temple, rather than helping the people in the way of the dam.
China gives more of a shit about tourism than its billions of people. It executes thousands of them a year to sell their body parts! And this is the country that we have just given permanent normal trade relations, and let into the W.T.O.
Goat sex free since 2001
My CS professor has been researching the same technology however, his puts the entire laser apparatus on a robotic vehicle that is completely/near-completely autonomous. He recently got a $2 million NSF grant to do the same digitization of Egypts pyramids.
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"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Sorry to disappoint you, but the majority of the world uses Metric system. In fact, US and England are the few countries that use Unit system. In addition, most scientific measurements are made in metric. NASA/JPL was the one that messed up when they used unit system by mistake. I think after that fiasco, they banned unit measurements and unit measuring tools from NASA
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
When you alter nature it has negative effects on something... its benefits just need to be weighed against the negatives.
Millions of people may have to move, but it is obviously of some benefit or wouldn't be being built. Like moving people off an island and declaring it deserted so it can be used as a US military base, damning some other river somewhere, or knocking weeks off travel time by building a canal.. it causes big trouble for some people but benefits so many more.
I don't see how this dam can be equated to the Taliban blowing up budhist statues.
Will they release a Quake III level based on the scan data?
If you want to know who Zhang Fei was in detail, click here for the story of the Three Kingdoms.
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If you're looking for actual 3D models to view (in VRML) made using this (or similar) technology visit: The AMUSE Project. It contains 61 3D digital representations of various aboriginal artifacts. Very cool stuff.
The actual scanning resolution is much higher than what you see on the web, of course. The native resolution is incredible.
(Now assuming a certain friend of mine sees this, you'll get a better explanation since he actually worked for one of those companies...)
They did the same thing some 40 years ago in Egypt, at the temple of Abu Simbel built by Ramses the Great. When the Aswan High Dam was about to be built, engineers realized the temple would be buried under all of the water flow. So, it was moved to a higher location that would be safer. Of course, they did that without the use of supercomputers and 3D modelling, so it should be really interesting to see how China's project turns out. To see Abu Simbel is amazing. It was carved directly into the rock. They had to cut it out, divide it into pieces, move it, and put it all back together without Linux, Irix, or even some of the advanced heavy machinery we have today.
but having been around, Canada still is the best place on earth. You have nothing to whine about.
Canada is not *drowning* in debt. We are very well off. We could settle debt very quickly, just by dipping into our *vast* natural resources.
Why don't we? Because we can weather it out.. we don't because we can always do it later.
I think your negative outlook on how 'bad' Canada is would change quickly if you did a wee bit of traveling.
Believe me, if you didn't pay the taxes you pay, you'd be living 100 years in the past. Canada does not have the population base to support low taxation and still maintain the status quo.
So.. if you are willing to give up medical, the social safety net, good roads, relatively honest police, and our good name the world over, keep pushing for lower taxes and less immigration.
Sure would be nice if that Canadian National Research Council could make a copy of whatever format they're storing their 3D digital copy of into something that I could browse on my computer over the Internet. Off hand, I don't know about this domain enough to suggest anything, but maybe VRML or even a Quake 3 map would work?
I dunno, I sure don't have the time or means right now to be making a trip to the original Zhang Fei Temple in China, but it sure would neat to be able to do it virtually and walk around in the temple over the Internet on my computer.........plus this way I'd be able to see the temple in its original location like it was built, instead of moved to wherever is convenient after its reconstruction...
(heh, and if they released a Quake 3 map or something like that, that precisely modeled and displayed the original temple, it sure would be hilarious if they served it up too, even though I can't see that actually happening. You'd have the tourists walking around to look at the temple, when campers would jump out with whatever the default weapon is in Quake 3 and start hacking away at them)
(or how about this. They just open sourced Quake 2 right? Maybe that would make it a better medium to be releasing this on than Quake 3, seeing as it's free and all)
So it would show the current conditions of the sites, and if some archeologist(sp?) could create models of what they think it looked like in ancient times. Just like some of the books that have the clear pages that show original and current conditions of the sites.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
The forth one sucks the big time
I agree, but did you do any better? Compare his inflammatory statement:
executes thousands of them a year to sell their body parts!
with yours:
name them as terrism supporting country and nuke them
It sounds to me like both of you have difficulty expressing an opinion intelligently.
How long before someone ports the 3D maps to Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 Arena?
Friends help you move... Real friends help you move bodies...
They must be also remastered, don't they?
Quake mod coming soon.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Wouldn't it be cool to run around with a rail gun in a Zhen temple?
I bet they could make some cool game levels from it. How big is it, if its big enough you could even make a whole game out of it: "Mystery of the Zheng Fei Temple"
In the past couple of years the general tax rate of Canada has been declining and is less than most European countries. Indeed in some lower tax areas of Canada the total tax load is lower than some higher tax areas of the US.
Marc Levoy's group at Stanford has been making 3D scans of artwork since 1992. They've now done Michaelangelo's David sculpture, several other major Italian statutes, and some famous buildings.
All we need now is to have this turned into a quake 3 map (or similar first person shooter) and have a good 'ol deathmatch game.
Since they know exactly how this temple is shaped and how to build it, I wonder if someone will start putting up exact duplicates in other places. They could even have some materials from the original (e.g., while moving the original, replace some old parts with new copies, and use the old parts in a different building).
It would be even more interesting to build a replica of the temple in the temple's original location with new materials, and leave it for future archeologists to find.
no.. halflife would be quake II.5, UT has *MUCH* better graphics than quake II. Frankly, I'm busy enough fragging that it doesn't matter that "ooh..it can render curved surfaces." the gameplay in UT is too good for that.
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
Its been done before (without the level of detail of this endeavor)... Did you know that the London Bridge is now located in Arizona?
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
I'm curious: how do you feel about the wacky conspiracy theorists who claim the FTAA will erode Canadia's excellent health care system? On the one hand I wouldn't mind moving north, on the other hand, it seems like you're all on the verge of getting majorly shafted by your 'friends' south of your border.
[o]_O
This is interesting, as Zhang Fei was born ~170 AD, it is interesting how a temple in his honor is more than 2000 years old?
Officially, everything has been metric since 1970 (Over thirty years ago, or those who can't count.)
While I have to agree with you that there is nothing like seeing artifacts in context with their "natural" surroundings (that is, in their original place and formation), I have to disagree somewhat with a computer not being able to provide a sense of scale.
The only reason for this would be because we, the users (ok, most of us, but not all) have become used to what are essentially 3D walkthroughs presented on a 2D computer screen, but in such a way as the scale is wrong, the details wrong, as well as one other important factor:
There is no immersion...
Now, for a game, this isn't a big issue. I would even argue that the slight bit of immersion that some players get when the dim the lights down and focus on the game, that it doesn't matter if size, etc are skewed - because it is a game, and hence, fantasy. IE - the players don't care or notice.
But we have the technology TODAY to create a reasonable, to-scale rendering and display of any artifact desirable to be viewed - not only can we view it from the "human-standpoint", but from an ant's, to a giant's! We can view it, fully immersed, as if we were "there". It could be made richly detailed (not perfect, but damn good - even on a PC today).
At the high end, we have CAVEs - at the "lower-end", we have HMDs (though one could easily argue that these could be high end as well - some models, indeed). Both these technologies, coupled with 3D tracking technologies and appropriate 3D sound systems - can achieve a super-high degree of immersion - placing the user "on-site", with the graphics scaled to whatever scale needed.
With today's machines, there should be little lag to mar the performance, and LCDs and miniature CRTs are of sufficiently high-resolution to permit large FOVs in current HMDs.
I am constantly amazed by the ohhs and ahhs over various graphics in 3D games - the speed, the number of FPS, etc - but no one, absolutely no one (outside of the lucky researchers who have CAVEs at their disposal, of course) - seems to want to make the leap of using these systems, these engines, in full immersive environments! It seems ludicrous, at best - tons of gamers willing to let a world slide by them on a window looking in, rather than buying or building HMDs to step into the worlds they play in.
What is holding everyone back? Cost is NOT THE ISSUE ANYMORE...
Ok, AC - that was a little over the top, and NOT aimed at you - your point is completely valid, up to a certain limit (that of your viewpoint of everybody using what amounts to "desktop-VR" systems)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon