If, like me, you live in ignorance of video games, happy to
leave them to a younger generation, I bring to your attention a project that
has used game technology to create something rather brilliant: a fly-through of
seventeenth century London. Let me explain.
A competition, called Off the Map, was sponsored last year
by a videogame company, Crytek, in conjunction with GameCity and the British
Library. The challenge was to take one of three themes - 17th
century London, the Gizeh Pyramids, or Stonehenge - and to turn maps and old drawings into a 3D
experience. The winners were six students from De Montfort University in
Leicester. They call themselves Pudding Lane Productions. 
You can see their winning entry here. I found it worth
watching several times, to catch the painstaking, prizewinning detail. The blacksmith’s
tools, the wee loaves of bread, pig carcases complete with flies, the wet mud
and yes, the giblets, cabbage stalks and manure, human and animal, that would have been underfoot everywhere. If you're interested in how it was done - the craft, not the technology - the group also kept a blog while
the work was in progress. When your cobblestones look more like the pebbles on
Brighton beach, it’s back to the drawing board.
A fly-through of another era and streets that have changed
beyond recognition is something historical novelists try to achieve every time
they sit down to write. We may have our maps pinned up above our desks, but a
map is just a map. What was it really like in those courts and alleys? Can we
even begin to imagine the sounds and smells? Hollywood doesn’t help. The actors
still have all their teeth.
The technology used by the Pudding Lane students cannot bring us odours. Not yet, at least.
One of my own rather pointless fears is that if I could suddenly time-travel, even the short distance to my 18th and 19th century creations, I wouldn’t much like it there. It would be too noisy, smelly and brutal for my 21st century sensibilities. A quick look round and I’d want to come home. The past is indeed a foreign country. I'll buy a ticket, but only if it's a guaranteed return. How about you?
The technology used by the Pudding Lane students cannot bring us odours. Not yet, at least.
One of my own rather pointless fears is that if I could suddenly time-travel, even the short distance to my 18th and 19th century creations, I wouldn’t much like it there. It would be too noisy, smelly and brutal for my 21st century sensibilities. A quick look round and I’d want to come home. The past is indeed a foreign country. I'll buy a ticket, but only if it's a guaranteed return. How about you?
