From a recent Catholic News Service press release:
Virtual visitors to the Vatican Museums' new Web site, launched at a
Vatican press conference June 24, can wander through the Sistine
Chapel, zoom in on details of Michelangelo's "Last Judgment," and gaze
close-up at scores of the museums' most famous masterpieces.
The project took five years and 15,000 hours of labor to complete, with
hardware donated by Hewlett-Packard. At its launch, the site contained
3,200 pages and 165 high-resolution images, and officials said the site
would be in continual expansion.
The site can be reached in English at:
http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/MV_Home.html
Other languages are also available by starting at the Vatican Web site,
www.vatican.va.
For the complete news release, see:
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/20030624.htm
The virtual tours are Java-based, and appear to use something like
Zoomify to let you zoom in quite a bit, to see greater detail. What a
shame they aren't presented much larger -- perhaps using full-screen
Quicktime VRs! And, as 180 by 360 degree panos!
Ideas? Suggestions? What would you have done with a large budget
project such as this?
