{"id":372,"date":"2010-10-12T07:23:24","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T11:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/?p=372"},"modified":"2016-01-25T09:46:17","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T13:46:17","slug":"procedurally-generating-archaeological-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/2010\/10\/procedurally-generating-archaeological-sites\/","title":{"rendered":"Procedurally Generating Archaeological Sites"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Walking around an archaeological site&#8211;whether an active dig or excavated ruins&#8211;makes you wonder what it would be like to see the site in its glory days. Existing computer tools make it possible to model small-scale sites virtually (a building, perhaps), but anything larger than a city block would take a long time to create. Even a small city is beyond the capabilities of any but the most dedicated team.<\/p>\n<p>One solution is <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Procedural_generation\">procedural generation<\/a>, where a human designer lays down a few rules&#8211;a basic city plan, for example&#8211;and a computer fills in the rest according to those rules. The result is a complete rendering of a city filled with buildings that plausibly inhabit the space, with a human only having to set up the initial parameters. Consider this reconstruction of Pompeii:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/necqGAYknIY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/software\/cityengine\/industries\/procedural-pompeii\">creators of this video<\/a> started with street plans and a variety of historically correct architectural models. A computer then generated buildings that fit the excavated ruins, resulting in a city that you can tour virtually. While it undoubtedly has inaccuracies, the result is compelling.<\/p>\n<p>Pompeii is better-preserved than most ancient cities, but you can apply a similar technique to any archaeological site. Archaeologists have partially excavated many biblical cities; they know at least some of the city&#8217;s layout. Even if they don&#8217;t know the whole thing, they can guess at what features a city of a given size needs; by starting with what archaeologists know, a computer can extrapolate a plausible street plan for the rest of the city. (I suppose that you could run the simulation many times and generate a probability of where a certain building&#8211;such as a synagogue&#8211;is likely to be.)<\/p>\n<p>These projects don&#8217;t often generate interior spaces or simulate objects like furniture, both of which dramatically increase the complexity of the simulation for only a modest benefit. But there&#8217;s no reason why we couldn&#8217;t model interior spaces. A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.co.uk\/news\/archive\/2010-07\/1\/subversion-procedurally-generating-an-entire-city\">forthcoming game called Subversion<\/a>, for example, uses procedural generation on both macro and micro scales: it generates both complete cityscapes and architectural floorplans of the buildings that it creates.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/a.openbible.info\/blog\/2010-10-blueprint.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"375\" alt=\"A screenshot from Subversion shows a building's procedurally generated floorplan.\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Recreating interiors for ancient houses is fairly straightforward: floorplans weren&#8217;t nearly as complicated as they are today. Imagine walking around ancient Capernaum, for example, and visiting the house where people <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Mark%202:1-12\">lowered a paralytic through the roof<\/a>. Architecture plays a crucial role in the story, a role that a virtual-reality model would help illuminate.<\/p>\n<h3>Further Reading<\/h3>\n<ol>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.procedural.com\/\">Procedural, Inc.<\/a> creates software for procedurally generating cities, both modern and ancient.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.romereborn.virginia.edu\/\">Rome Reborn<\/a> from the University of Virginia recreates ancient Rome using a combination of hand-modeled buildings (for thirty models and 250 elements) and procedurally generated buildings (for the remaining 6,750 buildings). <a href=\"http:\/\/www.romereborn.virginia.edu\/papers.php\">Academic papers<\/a> provide more technical detail, especially the one by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.romereborn.virginia.edu\/rome_reborn_2_documents\/papers\/Dylla2_Frischer_Rome_Reborn.pdf\">Dylla, Kimberly, Frischer, et al.<\/a> (PDF). They use the Procedural, Inc. software.<\/li>\n<li>A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_zluTvROHXA\">Subversion video<\/a> shows the steps a computer goes through to generate a cityscape.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/citeseerx.ist.psu.edu\/viewdoc\/download?doi=10.1.1.86.2434&#038;rep=rep1&#038;type=pdf\">Procedural 3D Reconstruction of Puuc Buildings in Xkipch\u00e9<\/a> demonstrates an academic application of the technology applied to archaeology.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/2010\/10\/magnasanti\/\">Magnasanti<\/a> talks about the &#8220;ultimate&#8221; SimCity city and was the inspiration for this post.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Walking around an archaeological site&#8211;whether an active dig or excavated ruins&#8211;makes you wonder what it would be like to see the site in its glory days. Existing computer tools make it possible to model small-scale sites virtually (a building, perhaps), but anything larger than a city block would take a long time to create. Even [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1097,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions\/1097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}