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| ==Available== | | ==Available== |
| * <nowiki>https://www.flyoverzone.com/rome-reborn-flight-over-rome/ | | * https://www.flyoverzone.com/rome-reborn-flight-over-rome/ |
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| ==People== | | ==Project Director== |
| * Project Director: Bernard Frischer, founder of Flyover Zone, Inc.
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| * Assistant Project Director: Alberto Prieto
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| * Director of 3D Modeling: Lasha Tskhondia
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| * Director of Historical Art: Mohamed Abdelaziz
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| * Director of Technical Art: Devin Good
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| * Director of Technology: Jeremiah Stevens, CTO of Flyover Zone, Inc.
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| * Director of Administration: Nathanael Tavares, CEO of Flyover Zone, Inc.
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| * Scientific Advisors (active in 2023): Karolina Kaderka, Paolo Liverani, Russell Scott, Pier Luigi Tucci
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| * Scientific Advisors (1996-2022): Carla Amici, Heinz Beste, Amanda Claridge, Diane Favro, Fulvio Cairoli Giuliani, Lynn Lancaster, C. Brian Rose, Barry Strauss, Mark Wilson Jones
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| ==Description==
| | * Bernard Frischer |
| In September of 1974, when Bernard Frischer was newly arrived as the Prix de Rome Fellow in Classical Studies at the American Academy in Rome, he was taken on a field trip to the Museum of Roman Civilization in EUR/Rome. There he saw the physical model of ancient Rome created under the direction of Italo Gismondi from the 1930s to the 1970s. Frischer immediately had the idea of finding a technological solution that could use the Gismondi model to create the illusion of walking down the streets of the ancient city. In the period 1974 to 1996 he explored various possible solutions (including, e.g., a videodisc on the model of the Aspen Movie Map), and he published a paper in 1988 describing what he at that time called "Project Cicero," which subsequently was renamed Rome Reborn. The key elements of Project Cicero were a digital recreation of ancient Rome derived from the physical model of Gismondi and the use of AI-infused avatars playing the role of Romans who could illustrate and explain to users various aspects of Roman life. The idea was to create an educational application that could make the study of ancient Rome and its culture more readily comprehensible and engaging to young students.
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| With the help of colleagues at UCLA, notably Architecture Professor Diane Favro, Frischer started Rome Reborn on December 1, 1996 at a conference held at the American Academy in Rome. It was to be an international initiative whose goal is the creation of 3D digital models illustrating the urban development of ancient Rome from the first settlement in the late Bronze Age (ca. 1000 B.C.) to the depopulation of the city in the early Middle Ages (ca. A.D. 550). Following the advice of the project's scientific advisory committee, the project team decided that 320 CE was the best moment in time to begin the work of modeling. At that time, Rome had reached the peak of its population, and major Christian churches were just beginning to be built. After this date, few new civic buildings were built. Much of what survives of the ancient city dates to this period, making reconstruction less speculative than it must by necessity be for earlier phases.
| | == Description == |
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| From the beginning, Project Director Frischer divided the archaeological data to be modeled into two classes. Class I elements are those features of the city whose exact location, phasing, design, function, and name are well known and studied. Consisting of an estimated 250 features, examples include the Colosseum and Pantheon. Class II elements are all the other features that are known with a greater or lesser degree of certainty. Examples of the latter include the many apartment buildings of the city, very few of which have left behind any trace visible today in Rome. The best source for Class II are the two late-antique Regionary Catalogues, which give the building stock of the city region by region. By following the indications of the Regionary Catalogues, an urban model of late-antique Rome can be quantitatively accurate, but--apart from the Class I elements--it cannot be accurate in detail.
| | '''Rome Reborn''' is a digital recreation of ancient Rome developed for educational and research purposes. |
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| The urban model (version 1.0) was first developed at Frischer's laboratory at UCLA, where he was a professor in the Department of Classics from 1974 to 2004. Version 1.0, owned entirely by the Regents of the University of California, was launched by Frischer and Rome's Mayor Walter Veltroni at a press conference in 2007. The Class II elements were 3D scan models derived from the great phyiscal model of ancient Rome created from the 1930s to the 1970s under the direction of Italo Gismondi. The complex scanning project was led by Prof. Gabriele Guidi, at the time a Professor of Reverse Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano (since 2022 he has been a Professor of Informatics in the Luddy School of Indiana University). The Class I elements were modeled by hand using Multigen Creator software. They included the Basilica of Maxentius, Colosseum, Ludus Magnus, Roman Forum, and Septizodium. Frischer raised all the funds used to create version 1.0 from industry sources (including Intel and Microsoft), philanthropists, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. (Despite several attempts, Frischer never succeeded in obtaining support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.) All students and faculty who worked on the project through Frischer's Cultural Virtual Reality Laboratory at UCLA were paid for their work, and outside expert consultants were also compensated with honoraria.
| | Architectural elements and landmarks are divided into two categories: |
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| It turned out that the idea of using scan models for the Class II elements was flawed: the Gismondi model was built at a scale of 1:250. When scaled up to 1:1, as required by the project's aims, all its defects could be seen. Walls that should have been smooth were pocked with holes or disfigured with bumps. Lines that ought to have been straight were jagged. The time and money it would have taken to remedy all these flaws was so great that Director Frischer decided to discard all the scan data deriving from the Gismondi model and to find a different solution. He had learned about the work of doctoral student Pascal Mueller, who was writing a dissertation at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich on the topic of procedural city modeling. Frischer contacted Mueller, who quickly agreed to apply his software solution, the CityEngine, to the problem of Rome Reborn's Class II features. The result was presented in August 2008 at SIGGRAPH, where Rome Reborn was the featured project and given a booth 110' x 30' in size at the entrance to a hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center. By this time, Frischer had founded a company (Frischer Consulting, Inc.) that took over responsibility for developing and financing Rome Reborn. The new Class II features were owned by the company, which also licensed the Class I features from the Regents of the University of California.
| | 1. Class I elements (e.g., the Colosseum) with detailed information are modeled by hand using software such as May, 3DS Max, and Blender |
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| Starting in 2009, the company set about replacing all the Regents' intellectual property with new 3D models of the same Class I monuments. It also started to add many more of the ca. 250 features belonging to Class I. The primary motivation in doing so was to move away from the FLT format of MultiGen Creator and to take advantage of all the affordances developed for OBJ. This meant that the Class I features could be presented with a higher degree of photorealism and could be more flexibly migrated from one scope of application to another. Frischer Consulting, therefore, did not renew its license agreement with the Regents and by 2018 owned all the intellectual property used in the Rome Reborn model. Version 3.0 was released that year. It was used for one of Frischer Consulting's first publications of virtual tourism called "Rome Reborn: Flight over Ancient Rome." This product was at first supported only on the virtual reality headsets of Oculus and HTC Vive. Soon, support for personal computers and mobile devices was added.
| | 2. Class II elements (less certain features) use 3D procedural models created with ESRI's CityEngine |
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| Version 3.0 of the city model left much to be desired in the degree of photorealism it supported. For a variety of technical reasons, the CityEngine models had to be displayed in their lowest level of detail (LOD). Meanwhile, the Class I elements were not presented using all the latest lighting features supported by software packages such as 3D Studio Max and Maya. So, Director Frischer decided to start work on Rome Reborn 4.0 through a successor company he founded in 2022 called Flyover Zone. Version 4.0 was released in November 2023. It marks a dramatic step forward in terms of photorealism of the Class I and II elements (now displayed in their highest LOD), and it also represents a quantitative advance in the number of Class I elements of the city that are incorporated with detailed hand modeling. These now include the following:
| | The Rome Reborn urban model shows the city within the Aurelian Walls as it might have appeared in 320 CE. The model is used as the principal visual resource in the following educational virtual tours available on the Yorescape platform: "Rome Reborn: Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine," "Rome Reborn: Baths of Caracalla," "Rome Reborn: Flight over Ancient Rome," "Rome Reborn: Roman Forum," and "Rome Reborn: Pantheon." More tours are planned. The best place to start is "Flight over Ancient Rome," which is a two-hour tour with 39 stops and 12 time warps giving a synthetic view of the model and the city's economy, geography, governance, housing, infrastructure, and more. There are no plans to create urban models of Rome beyond late antiquity. Dissemination occurs through Yorescape, offering virtual tours on various platforms. The urban model has also been used as a resource for research. A free, one-week trial subscription is available to Yorescape, which also includes other virtual tours to iconic destinations such as the Acropolis in Athens and the Giza plateau. |
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| Aqua Claudia,
| | ===History of the project=== |
| Ara Pacis,
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| Arch of Constantine,
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| Arch of Septimius Severus,
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| Arch of Titus,
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| Atrium Vestae,
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| Aurelian Wall and gates,
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| Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine,
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| Basilica Neptuni,
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| Baths of Agrippa,
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| Baths of Caracalla (including interiors and sculptural decoration),
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| Baths of Constantine,
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| Baths of Decius,
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| Baths of Diocletian,
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| Baths of Nero,
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| Baths of Titus,
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| Baths of Trajan,
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| Capitoline Hill (complete),
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| Circus Flaminius,
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| Circus of Gaius and Nero (late-antique phase),
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| Circus Maximus,
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| Flavian Amphitheater (Colosseum),
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| Imperial fora,
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| Imperial palaces,
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| Ludus Magnus,
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| Mausoleum of Augustus,
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| Mausoleum of Hadrian,
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| Montecitorio Obelisk,
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| Naumachia of Trajan,
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| Nymphaeum Alexandri,
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| Odeon of Domitian,
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| Pantheon (including interior and sculptural decoration),
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| Porta Praenestina,
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| Porticus Liviae,
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| Pyramid of Cestius,
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| Roman Forum (including the interiors of the Basilica Aemilia, Basilica Julia, and Curia Julia),
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| Septizodium,
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| Stadium of Domitian,
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| Temple of Diana on the Aventine,
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| Temple of Claudius on the Caelian,
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| Temple of Hadrian in the Campus Martius,
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| Temple of Matidia in the Campus Martius,
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| Temple of Minerva on the Aventine,
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| Temple of Serapis on the Quirinal,
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| Temple of the Sun in the Campus Agrippae,
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| Temple of Venus and Rome,
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| Templum Divorum,
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| Theater of Balbus,
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| Theater of Marcellus, and the
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| Tomb of Marcus Vergilius Eurysaces.
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| With the publication of version 4.0, Director Frischer stated that the project had reached its initial goal of making the Rome Reborn model ready for deployment in teaching. Flyover Zone has already published educational virtual tours of the Basilica of Maxentius, Baths of Caracalla, Pantheon, Roman Forum, and a Flight over Ancient Rome. More tours of individual sites are planned for release in 2024 and beyond.
| | The project was initiated in 1996 by Bernard Frischer (https://drive.google.com/file/d/16-L-5fwMrOX2eoHSoY00Gw53glSnAyXN/view?usp=sharing). With the help of an advisory committee of experts on Roman archaeology and topography, it aimed to create scientifically accurate 3D digital models depicting the city of ancient Rome. |
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| Dissemination of the model occurs through Yorescape, a streaming multimedia platform built on Unity and developed by Flyover Zone specifically to serve the needs of virtual tourism. Yorescape supports mobile devices (iOS/Android), PCs (Mac/Windows), and virtual reality headsets (Oculus and HTC Vive). Its features include the integration of text, images, maps, video, panoramic photographs, and free-roamable 3D models. Yorescape is available with a free trial subscription to individuals and enterprises. Those wishing to extend their use are asked to pay a fee.
| | Rome Reborn version 1.0 was launched in 2007, 2.0 in 2008, 3.0 in 2018, 4.0 in November 2023. |
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| As illustrated by several of Frischer's own publications, the Rome Reborn urban visualization has the potential to support new empirical (or what Frischer calls "simpirical") research in which the Rome Reborn model makes it possible for scholars to make observations and run experiments that would otherwise be impossible short of true time travel.
| | [[category:3D]] |
| | | [[category:Projects]] |
| ==References==
| | [[category:Archaeology]] |
| * Frischer, Bernard and David Massey, 2022. 3D Urban Models as Tools for Research and Discovery Two Case Studies of the Rostra in the Roman Forum Utilizing Rome Reborn, in Critical Archaeology in the Digital Age: Proceedings of the 12th EMA Visiting Scholar's Conference, 23-47; available online at: https://www.academia.edu/74034923/3D_Urban_Models_as_Tools_for_Research_and_Discovery_Two_Case_Studies_of_the_Rostra_in_the_Roman_Forum_Utilizing_Rome_Reborn
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| * Frischer, Bernard, with technical appendices by Papolo Alberi Alber, David Dearborn, and John Fillwalk, 2018. “Edmund Buchner's Solarium Augusti: New Observations and Simpirical Studies,” Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia 3-90.
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| * Frischer Bernard, 2017. Review of Andrea Carandini, editor. The Atlas of Ancient Rome: Biography and Portraits of the City. Volume 1: text and images; volume 2: tables and indexes. 2017. 1280 pages, 532 colour and b&w illustrations, 9 tables. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press. Antiquity 91: 1659-1662.
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| * Frischer, Bernard, John Pollini, Giuseppina Capriotti, David Dearborn, John Fillwalk, Karl Galinsky, Christina Haueber, John Miller, Jackie Murray, Michele Salzman, Molly Swetnam-Burland, 2017. “New Light on the Horologium Augusti, the Montecitorio Obelisk, and the Ara Pacis,” Studies in Digital Heritage 1: 18-119. Available online at: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/sdh/article/view/23331.
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| * Frischer, Bernard, 2014. " "Cultural and Digital Memory: Case Studies from the Virtual World Heritage Laboratory," in Memoria Romana, edited by G. Karl Galinsky, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor) 151-164.
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| * Taylor-Nelms, Lee, Lynne Kvapil, John Fillwalk, Bernard Frischer, forthcoming. " "Investigating the Effectiveness of Problem-Based Learning in 3D Virtual Worlds. A Preliminary Report on the Digital Hadrian's Villa Project," Proceedings of the 2012 Conference of Computing Applications to Archaeology, Southampton, UK, 26-29 March 2012.
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| * Dylla, Kimberly, Bernard Frischer et al., 2010. "Rome Reborn 2.0: A Case Study of Virtual City Reconstruction Using Procedural Modeling Techniques," in CAA 2009. Making History Interactive. 37th Proceedings of the CAA Conference March 22-26, 2009, Williamsburg, Virginia (Archaeopress: Oxford, 2010) 62-66; available online at https://www.academia.edu/108083880/Rome_Reborn_2_0_A_Case_Study_of_Virtual_City_Reconstruction_Using_Procedural_Modeling_Techniques
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| * Wells, Sarah, Bernard Frischer, et al., 2010. "Rome Reborn in Google Earth," in CAA 2009. Making History Interactive. 37th Proceedings of the CAA Conference March 22-26, 2009, Williamsburg, Virginia (Archaeopress: Oxford, 2010) 373-379.
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| * Frischer, B., 2008. "The Rome Reborn Project. How Technology is helping us to study history," OpEd, November 10, 2008. University of Virginia.
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| * Frischer, B. and P. Stinson, 2007. "The Importance of Scientific Authentication and a Formal Visual Language in Virtual Models of Archaeological Sites: The Case of the House of Augustus and Villa of the Mysteries," in Interpreting The Past: Heritage, New Technologies and Local Development; available online at https://www.academia.edu/108083880/Rome_Reborn_2_0_A_Case_Study_of_Virtual_City_Reconstruction_Using_Procedural_Modeling_Techniques
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| * Proceedings of the Conference on Authenticity, Intellectual Integrity and Sustainable Development of the Public Presentation of Archaeological and Historical Sites and Landscapes, Ghent, East-Flanders, 11-13 September 2002. Flemish Heritage Institute, Ename Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation. 2007, Brussels, Belgium.
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| * Frischer, B., 2006. "New Directions for Cultural Virtual Reality: A Global Strategy for Archiving, Serving, and Exhibiting 3D Computer Models of Cultural Heritage Sites," in Proceedings of the Conference, Virtual Retrospect 2005 (Bordeaux), 168-175.
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| * Frischer, B., D. Abernathy, F.C. Giuliani, R. Scott, H. Ziemssen, 2006. "A New Digital Model of the Roman Forum," in "Imaging Ancient Rome. Documentation-Visualization-Imagination," edited by Lothar Haselberger and John Humphrey, Journal of Roman Archaeology, Supplementary Series 61, 163-182.
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| * Guidi, G., B. Frischer, et al., 2005. "Virtualizing Ancient Rome: 3D Acquisition and Modeling of a Large Plaster-of-Paris Model of Imperial Rome," Videometrics VIII, edited by J.-Angelo Beraldin, Sabry F. El-Hakim, Armin Gruen, James S. Walton, 18-20 January 2005, San Jose, California, USA, SPIE, vol. 5665, 119-133.
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| * Frischer, B., 2005. "The Digital Roman Forum Project: Remediating the Traditions of Roman Topography," in Acts of the 2nd Italy-United States Workshop, Rome, Italy, November 3-5, 2003, Berkeley, USA, May, 2005 edited by M. Forte, BAR International Series 1379 (Oxford 2005) 9-21.
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| * Frischer, Bernard, 1988. “Project Cicero,” a chapter in the Microsoft CD-ROM Library, vol. 3: 145-156
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| [[Category:Projects]]
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| [[category:visualisation]] | |
| [[category:prototypes]] | |
| [[category:Architecture]] | |
| [[category:Virtual reality]]
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| [[category:legacy]] | |