So, back to visiting archaeological and historical sites in SL. As a disclaimer, my thoughts on the sites I visit are always from an educational viewpoint, as in would they be a good site for students to visit? Today I visited Yaroland, a recreation of ancient Rome as visualized by Yaro. I visited it some yesterday and came back again tonight. It is an interesting site, but for some reason I seem to have lag issues when I visit (I guess I need a better computer). I asked another avatar about lag issues and she did not have any at that moment, but as she pointed out, there is an amazing amount of textures on the site. Yaroland has quite a collection of buildings, the Pantheon, an amphitheater, an aqueduct, some temples, a triumphal arch, a bathing complex where you can swim, and the imperial palace. The site has lots of colorful textures as I mentioned, including some nice mosaics. The Pantheon recreation was quite colorful. I did wish that flying wasn’t disabled, since it would be nice to fly around the building and look at things from different angles, like you can at Vassar’s Sistine Chapel.
I also wish that there was more information available about what was being portrayed and why they were visualized the way they are. Yaro’s introductory notecard did say that he wanted "…to experience how it felt and looked to wander through an intact roman city, not only the ruins which are left today." The site certainly fits the bill for that. From an educational standpoint though, I can imagine that most people visiting the site would be a bit confused about what they were seeing, depending on how much they know about ancient Rome. The site was obviously a lot of work and the creator has put in quite a bit of time to create the numerous buildings. As an aside totally unrelated to the site – I happened to look and up and noticed there were a bunch of platforms floating overhead. It was quite an interesting sight to see.
RSM
Ancient History Ramblings 