No matter how far technology advances, there will never be a substitute for actually seeing a real historical artifact. But maybe there is a way that technology could help us to better understand it.

That’s what the experts at the British Museum in London had in mind when they scheduled a Virtual Reality Weekend for August 8 and 9. The interactive exhibit used Samsung headsets to immerse visitors in the Bronze Age, helping to bring real, actual artifacts in the museum to life by showing them in their original time periods. Thanks to this exhibit (which hopefully will become a permanent part of the already well-done museum one day), fans of history can find themselves in an accurate representation of an ancient roundhouse.

Historians and software developers worked together to create an immersive experience that was also historically accurate. You can read the details of how they pulled this off here.

With any luck, maybe this will only be the first of many such exhibits, and soon we’ll be able to stand among the ruins of a Roman fort and see exactly what it probably looked like two millenia ago.

Advertisement