Virtual Angkor: Visualising the Medieval Cambodian Metropolis of Angkor

May 17, 2019 6:06 PM

Virtual Angkor is "a groundbreaking collaboration between Virtual History Specialists, Archaeologists and Historians designed to bring the Cambodian metropolis of Angkor to life. Built for the classroom, it has been created to take students into a 3D world and to use this simulation to ask questions about Angkor’s place in larger networks of trade and diplomacy, its experience with climate variability and the structure of power and kingship that underpinned the city." [Via]

Video: Simulating 24 Hours at Medieval Angkor Wat

Since 2014, a team at Monash SensiLab have been researching how dynamic simulations can visualise recent archaeological discoveries at Angkor Wat, and pose hypothetical scenarios about how the complex might have operated almost a millennium ago. This study is a simulation of movement through time and reconstructed space, where the paths of thousands of animated ‘agents’ are tracked as they enter, exit and circulate within the temple enclosure. The time frame of the simulation is just 24 hours: a virtual day in the life of medieval Angkor Wat.

SensiLab: Visualising Angkor

Since 2014, a SensiLab team has been researching and crafting a dynamic simulation that draws upon recent archaeological discoveries to visualise how the Angkor Wat complex might have operated almost a millennium ago. As well as creating a comprehensive virtual reconstruction the research allows an immersive analytic study of the complex, where the paths of thousands of animated ‘agents’ are tracked as they enter, exit and circulate within the temple enclosure.

Fall of Civilizations Podcast: The Khmer Empire - Fall of the God Kings

The city of Angkor died a slow death: Sediment cores suggest Angkor went out because of a century of neglect.

In the early Middle Ages, nearly one out of every thousand people in the world lived in Angkor, the sprawling capital of the Khmer Empire in present-day Cambodia. But by the 1500s, Angkor had been mostly abandoned—its temples, citadels, and complex irrigation network left to overgrowth and ruin. Recent studies have blamed a period of unstable climate in which heavy floods followed lengthy droughts, which broke down the infrastructure that moved water around the massive city.

But it turns out Angkor’s waterworks may have been vulnerable to these changes because there was no one left to maintain and repair them. A new study suggests that Khmer rulers, religious officials, and city administrators had been steadily flowing out of Angkor to other cities for at least a century before the end.

posted by homunculus (3 comments total)

Angkor Wat Might Be the Prettiest Street View Yet
posted by homunculus at 6:10 PM on May 17, 2019 [4 favorites]

Previously.

Excellent stuff.
posted by clavdivs at 7:42 PM on May 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

This is so cool!
posted by Harald74 at 11:32 PM on May 18, 2019