In the past 2018, Versailles has welcomed 8 million on-site visitors, which should only account for a small percentage of the number of people who know it and want to travel in person.
Editor’s note: This article is from interface news, author Wu Yangyu.
Before the 21st century, no one thought about it. The old and prestigious Versailles can be copied to the online world almost as it is, appearing in the form of online web pages and VR applications.
In October of this year, Google Arts & Culture and the Digital Department of Versailles completed the great migration of culture and history.
In a modern, technologically advanced society, Versailles, located in the southwestern suburbs of Paris for nearly 400 years, has its own digital director. Paul Chaine is a laughing and amiable French middle-aged man who is responsible for all the digital projects related to Versailles.
This ancient palace, which covers an area of about 2,000 acres, has ushered in 8 million on-site visitors in the past 2018, which should be only a small among the people who know Versailles and want to visit in person. proportion.
Panorama of Versailles (Photo from: Google)
“We really want Versailles to be an open palace that can be open to all.” Paul Chaine told the interface journalist, “We hope to have more people to visit Versailles, for example, in a digital way.” Palace, so that more families and friends can appreciate our works.” To this end, Versailles has actually done a variety of digital attempts such as the theme of original music, the introduction of mobile applications introduced as the main content, special exhibition videos, etc. .
And all this has collided with the ideas of the Google Art and Culture Department.
Google Art and Culture is a non-profit project established by Google since 2011. It has already established partnerships with more than 2,000 museums, art galleries, archives and other cultural institutions around the world. “What we do is to provide these partners with free tools and technologies to help them share their collections of art and crafts with online audiences in online or mobile applications.” Google Art and CultureProject manager Sixtine Fabre told reporters.
The team will look for different perspectives and draw closer to the world’s many interesting content, including Japanese cuisine, Australian sportsmanship or the paintings of the famous painter Vermeer.
Google Art and Culture chose Versailles, mainly considering it is one of the most visited museums in the world, and there are a large number of precious but fragile artifacts and works of art in the palace, which is very suitable for using technology to make follow-up More people who are curious about it and digitally contact it.
The theme of this virtual exhibition that went live a month ago is: “Versailles: This palace belongs to you.” The interior also contains 18 themed exhibitions, displaying more than 390 exhibits; 18 3D models and 6 3D play guides; 6 ultra-high resolution world famous paintings and 4 immersive painting tours; and 4 360 degrees A panoramic tour. You can zoom in and out to see the portrait of Queen Marie Antoinette again and again, or walk through the virtual palace to the viewing gallery that connects the rooms.
One of the virtual exhibitions “Fashion: For her” (Photo: Google)
In order to further integrate with cutting-edge technology and provide a more immersive experience for the audience, the team also developed a set of VR applications supporting French, English and Chinese, which can be used by HTC Vive and Oculus Rift hardware.
Paul Chaine explains this time-consuming VR project: “First we took 130,000 photos of the Palace of Versailles, some through the camera, some through the drone, the total collected data reached 4TB, the texture pixel exceeded 150 Billion.”
Shooting the scene (from: Google)
They have encountered many time and technical challenges during this time. Six days in the Versailles are open to the public, and the team can only operate on Mondays and every night. Shooting process