Virtual reality in ancient Rome opens near the Coliseum

It’s back to the future — or is that forward to the past? — at a theater near the Coliseum (not the one in L A) where “3-D Rewind Rome” opened on Nov. 20. The high-tech, virtual-reality program is aimed at introducing visitors to ancient Rome in a vivid and exciting way to prepare them for touring the 2,000-year-old city.
Spectators don special 3-D glasses for the 30-minute program that uses some 60,000 virtual characters — senators, plebeians, even vestal virgins — brought to life using some of the same kinds of technology that created “The Lord of the Rings.”

The show begins at a construction site in modern-day Rome where a frescoed tunnel that once led to the living quarters of gladiators is discovered. Then, as part of a virtual crowd in the Coliseum during a gladiatorial contest, the “3-D Rewind Rome” audience members get to give the thumbs-up or thumbs-down sign to a prostrate fighter. The action seems so real that preview audiences flinched when a gladiator thrust a sword in their virtual direction.
Besides its entertainment value, the program educates visitors who too often wander around the Forum area with no real sense of what they are seeing. And unlike most Hollywood versions of the ancient world, “3-D Rewind Rome” is based on a virtual map of the imperial capital that was masterminded by scholars and was 10 years in the making. The map, known as Rome Reborn, will soon be available on Google Earth.
“3-D Rewind Rome” is showing