19 ms·

Show HN: I 3D scanned the interior of the Great Pyramid at Giza

1752 points by lukehollis 4y ago

Hey HN, I 3d scanned the interior of the Great Pyramid / Khufu's pyramid for the Giza Project this summer and just finished the guided version to share. Would love feedback and/or problems you encounter. I used both a Leica BLK 360 and Matterport Pro 2 to do the scanning and the Matterport SDK for the web viewer. Matterport's web display with Three.js has been the most accessible to a wide audience in the past (previous iterations are in Unity and Unreal, but difficult to download over slower connections). I've been interviewing social studies teachers around the 6th grade level to create teaching materials as well, and these along with other monuments that I've scanned at Giza are up at https://giza.mused.org/ https://giza.mused.org/ Cheers from Cairo--and thanks for any feedback.

terhechte 4y ago
This is really really cool! I enjoyed the explanations as well as the fantastic images
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks for visiting!
massinstall 4y ago
I’m curious to see it but FYI it doesn’t work on an iPhone with Firefox (you can never get past the first screen).
- elliotpo 4y ago
  i am using it on an iPhone with Firefox right now
- cormullion 4y ago
  Works fine on my iPad too...
site-packages1 4y ago
I am amazed by this. I’ve been playing with a 3D scanning app on iPhone as a total amateur and totally new to the mode of collection and it truly produces amazing results with only iPhone lidar. Scaniverse if you’re curious.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Very cool, I know Scaniverse! I think the lower bar to entry for digitization has already been transformative for preservation, conservation, and site education at heritage sites like these.
- ridgeguy 4y ago
  The new version claims not to even need the LIDAR.
monksy 4y ago
My work network classifies this site as adult content.
petargyurov 4y ago
That is insanely cool. The dollhouse view is nice. It would be great if you could see a 2D schematic of where you are in the pyramid as you're exploring. Incredible job!
- citrons 4y ago
  Actually liked that it lacked a minimap. Got a better sense of scale. After going trough most of the tunnels and getting stuck and kings chamber there, couldn't crawl back, I zomemed out and was shocked by the scale of the tunnels.
  - lukehollis 4y ago
    Thanks to you both for feedback on the minimap--this is one that we've had some requests for but I haven't started on yet.
deleted 4y ago
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JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
Oh wow, thank you for doing this. I’ll probably never be able to go to the real thing and this has been a fascination since childhood! I’ve got every part memorized from a book I had that had line drawings of the chambers.
hatsubishi 4y ago
Is it possible to see it in VR?
- seydor 4y ago
  Works great with Quest2 , and it s amazing
  - Bad_CRC 4y ago
    with the normal browser?
    - seydor 4y ago
      Yes Matterport always worked well for me. Surprisingly i have found that some other startups in the VR real estate space do not work at all with the Quest. It's very odd to build a product that doesnt work with the (by far) most popular headset
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
sneak 4y ago
What is the reason that Mixpanel and GTM are on this page? Is there a specific reason that such invasive tracking is required for an educational resource that does not generate revenue?
- mikebonnell 4y ago
  They likely use some of the metrics to continue to get grant funding. You gave us $1m in grant money which we used to produce this webpage which has XXX millions of views. I'm sure other tools would suffice but given it's a project at Harvard, they may have institutional requirements.
easytiger 4y ago
Incredible. Going through this gave me similar sentiments to when i first used my school library copy of Encarta 98. Question: there are some blurred out areas, how come? e.g. https://imgur.com/a/6Ca5EYG https://imgur.com/a/6Ca5EYG
- mkl 4y ago
  I think it's just that the scanner doesn't look straight up.
- jackcarter 4y ago
  Camera limitation – it doesn't capture a full sphere. That's exactly the spot where I also noticed it.
  - easytiger 4y ago
    ahh, of course. thanks
nimrody 4y ago
Beautiful! Thanks for doing this work. Can you explain a bit on the process that was used to create this? How do you determine your position inside the pyramid precisely? (would make for a great dungeon-style game :)
- joshvm 4y ago
  I've used the BLK 360 before so some comment here. Essentially you scan at various points within the volume of interest, e.g. you walk around, place the scanner, scan, repeat. Each scan takes a few minutes at high angular resolution. Leica provides software called Register (or Cyclone) to match the scans together. Because you generally don't have GPS (the BLK doesn't have a GPS onboar and GPS is anyway much more inaccurate than the scan resolution - metres versus millimetres), the software has to do some kind of feature matching to stitch the scans. You get "links" between adjacent scanning points, and then you do a big optimisation pass to combine the scans. This scan matching is by far the most difficult and time consuming bit. Probably OP had to manually align the scans as a first pass and then the software takes over using some algorithm like ICP (iterative closest point). This is still only "internal" (i.e. scans are correct relative to each other, but you don't know where the full scan is) and you'd have to combine with an external reference point to geo-locate in the world. Doesn't really matter for this because you're just viewing the pyramid on its own, and you're not overlaying on a map. If you were, then usually what you have to do is take several ground control point (GCP) that are known with high accuracy and then reference that in the scan. You could geo-reference these using an RTK GPS or something, but it's quite difficult to get world coordinates at the millimetre scale and it rarely matters if you're that precise as long as the scan itself is consistent. This video from Leica shows the full workflow for a typical use case (scanning a house with indoor and outdoor points). Note the point where they link inside and outside, around 16 mins in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV0LPKowOXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV0LPKowOXU
  - bambax 4y ago
    Complete newbie here, but wouldn't it be possible to affix some marks on the walls to help with the stitching afterwards?
layer8 4y ago
The page crashes for me on iOS.
- malteof 4y ago
  Same! iPhone 12 on latest iOS.
  - ErneX 4y ago
    Try tapping the “aA” on the URL bar and disable content blockers.
    - layer8 4y ago
      Doesn’t help.
      - zach_garwood 4y ago
        alex_suzuki 4y ago
        What’s with the passive-aggressive unhelpful Apple-hating comments? Just users of a browser with 20% of mobile market share, reporting a bug. And btw, I can confirm this crashes for me some way into the pyramid (iOS 16).
- moffkalast 4y ago
  That is so odd, after all Safari is known to have wide support for everything. /s
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks for letting me know!
ryanmarr 4y ago
Where are the puzzles that open the door to the linking book?
robmerki 4y ago
This is absolutely amazing work. I have been searching for something exactly like this for quite some time. I am beyond thrilled that this now exists. THANK YOU.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks for visiting! There are a few of these scans in the works that I linked in the comments if they're interesting for Ancient Egypt or elsewhere.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Same feelings. I've been fascinated by ancient Egypt as long as I can remember and this is just about perfect.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
That's cool! Thanks for sharing it!
neoneye2 4y ago
Well made. Amazing to explore. Much appreciated. Tested in my Firefox 106.0.1 on macOS Monterey 12.6, and it works great.
ErneX 4y ago
Crashes on my iPhone 13 Pro running latest iOS version / Safari. Update: turning off content blockers solves the crashing issue.
_joel 4y ago
Awesome work! I've been in there and one of the things missing is the change it humidity and temperature that hits you, maybe on the next revision ;)
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Uff too real. I worked up a sweat on this one
sdo72 4y ago
This is very amazing. Thank you very much!
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks for visiting & feedback!
runjake 4y ago
As many others have commented. My first thought was "Amazing!" The only thing I encountered is that my mouse wheel scrolling was a bit too touchy and I kept accidentally zooming too much into a 3D scene while scrolling the text. But that doesn't really matter, because this is amazingly cool.
green-eclipse 4y ago
This is amazing! Incredible work! Thank you for doing this project. FYI I found a typo - the word "cuts": > It's 750 by 750 feet at the base and is made of over 2 million large, limestone blocks cuts from the surrounding area. Also - from one of the angles shown, it looks like there's a golf course next to the pyramids? Not at all what I expected!
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks! And haha yes, definitely visit Giza someday--it's an incredible place to work.
- groffee 4y ago
  There's a pizza hut across the road as well lol
mkl 4y ago
This is great! I noticed a few apostrophes missing in the captions in "King's Chamber" and "Queen's Chamber".
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks for visiting&feedback--will get this fixed!
kodah 4y ago
This was a really cool experience. Thanks for putting this together.
sizzzzlerz 4y ago
Such a small volume of rooms and tunnels compared to the volume of the pyramid itself. The labor required is unimaginable.
cush 4y ago
Aaaaand the site crashes in ios safari
- timbit42 4y ago
  That doesn't mean there is a problem with the website.
cryptozeus 4y ago
I an sure its good, doesn’t work on safari on ios 16
- zach_garwood 4y ago
  That sounds like an Apple problem. Works perfectly on Firefox on Android, not to mention Chromium on Linux.
soared 4y ago
Incredible! I was under the impression there were tons of passages and chambers that were intricate, thank you for teaching me otherwise!
tmilard 4y ago
It's nice. Maybe the best matterport's example I have seen so far... The 3D in the transitions [of two 360 photos] are really good and the pixel quality is great. But still... The very limited part of Matterport is that it is "mostly" a series of 360 photos. Now, because a pyramid is mainly a long corridor, you do not see too much those limitations. So great. Thierry, developper of https://free-visit.net/ https://free-visit.net/
- arnaudsm 4y ago
  It's not only 2D 360, there's full 3D photogrammetry. Click on the dollhouse button on the bottom left.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  I hear you--I think this is limitation is useful for bandwidth/loading time constraints.
HPsquared 4y ago
Semi-related, the Great Pyramid was also scanned using muon radiography, by which a "big void" was discovered [0]. Muons can penetrate through a lot of material, so they can see through very large, thick things like the pyramids. Muon tomography was also used to scan the Fukushima reactors [1] and see where the fuel ended up. [0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.01576.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.01576.pdf [1] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Muons-suggest-location-of-fuel-in-unit-3-0210174.html https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Muons-suggest-location...
- zppln 4y ago
  Looks like that gear is still there (in the bedrock chamber) scanning. The 3D tour mentions it.
- anshumankmr 4y ago
  A void? Is it another chamber? I have so many questions. Though from the images, it doesn't seem like a chamber. https://www.livescience.com/scan-great-pyramid-of-giza https://www.livescience.com/scan-great-pyramid-of-giza
  - klausjensen 4y ago
    I bet it's the aliens' server-room.
    - simonh 4y ago
      Cryopod/Egg chamber.
    - anshumankmr 4y ago
      Is there any non invasive way to see the interior of the chamber? I hope we are aren't gonna leave it be.
      - LeifCarrotson 4y ago
        To whom do you refer to with "we"? I hope we leave it be until we develop the tech to measure it non-invasively. The tech available to Napoleon's Egyptologists or the British in the 1800s would not have allowed him to do it. They would have picked up anything they could carry and brought it back to Room 4 in the British Museum. Our tech in 2022 does not currently allow us to see the interior of the chamber more precisely than "there's a void there." It's likely to not have been breached for millenia, it would be positively criminal to drill to it. I say wait a couple hundred years until some future archaeologist will have a neutrino or muon scanner with sufficient resolution to read the hieroglyphics. It'll keep.
andybak 4y ago
Thank you. Is the scan data available and if so - under what licence?
cjauvin 4y ago
Many years ago I had the chance to visit the Pyramid of Giza but when it was time to go inside it, I've been instantly stopped by my visualization of how I would feel in this tight and claustrophobic space (almost crouching in some places, I've been told), especially if there are many people at the same time, and you cannot easily move.. So I'm very glad to be able to finally see it with such an amazing technology, thanks!
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks so much for this feedback—providing accessibility for these spaces is a huge concern for our future work.
fipar 4y ago
This is amazing, thanks for sharing!
rqtwteye 4y ago
Nice! I was just there last week. Are there any efforts to scan the ground in places like Saqqara? It seems there is still a ton of stuff left in the ground. After seeing the pyramids and Luxor I am amazed at the scale and precision the Egyptians were building such a long time ago. Truly impressive.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  That's awesome! I wonder if we crossed paths. Are you still in Eg? I've worked with projects at Saqqara and Luxor too, some of it is public and being used for education if it's interesting: Luxor Temple: https://luxortemple.mused.org/en/guided/178/luxor-temple https://luxortemple.mused.org/en/guided/178/luxor-temple
MichaelZuo 4y ago
Great work, though the images of the entrance seems to be split into hundreds of tiny pieces, what's up with that?
dekhn 4y ago
Originally, the exterior of the pyramid was covered in polished limestone (casement) that has since fallen off/been removed. Apparently you would have been able to see them from many miles off as incredibly bright triangles.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  I wonder if they'll ever be restored.
  - TanguyN 4y ago
    Probably not as that would be quite a... pharaonic task.
    - dekhn 4y ago
      More importantly, the areas are preserved now, not being restored to their former glory. Many of the stones were carted off and used in other buildings, with the rest sitting at the base of the pyramid.
sergiotapia 4y ago
This is incredible thank you so much for sharing this! Something terrifying about how deep underground you go and then you reach a pitch black hole and there's still more to go. Wow! How was it inside? Is it very silent? I imagine it gives off very weird energy.
me_bx 4y ago
Looks pretty cool. Feedback about the 3D navigation experience: * very laggy on Firefox android, on a decent device * very laggy on Firefox linux (Intel graphics) * smooth on Chromium with the same linux (Intel graphics)
- tetris11 4y ago
  smooth on Firefox in Linux for me, Intel graphics
acdanger 4y ago
Amazing work. I'm also interested in digitizing artifacts and historic places, but haven't been able to figure out how to go about getting a project off the ground. Any chance you'd do a write up explaining how you were able to get this project set up? I'm more interested in the logistics and the red-tape you had to go through in order to get access to do the scans. I see you've got a business setup around it as well, are you hiring? The jobs page leads to the blog right now.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks, and yes, I haven't blogged about this yet but will. It's really important that the local teams that make these scans happen are featured prominently. For similar process here's the blog that I wrote about working at Luxor Temple with the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and the University of Chicago: https://blog.mused.org/digitizing-luxor-temple-a-virtual-field-trip-for-students-around-the-globe/ https://blog.mused.org/digitizing-luxor-temple-a-virtual-fie... Drop me a line! I'd love to chat--I'm at luke@mused.org
onemoresoop 4y ago
This is very insightful. Thank you for all your work!!
blobbers 4y ago
AMAZING! Will try it out on a headset, and show it to kids who have been asking mummy questions. Thank you so much!
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks for trying it out! Would love feedback about how everything works in the headset
whoopdedo 4y ago
Someone lost their hat to the right of the entrance. I was clicking around for quite a while before I realized I could use WASD+arrows.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Ah! I think that might've been one of the guard's. I love that Matterport added the WASD+Arrows.
lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks for the feedback! Didn't know if people would like this. If this is interesting, and you'd like to learn more about Ancient Egypt, here are a few more sites that I've worked at: Luxor Temple: https://luxortemple.mused.org/en/guided/178/luxor-temple https://luxortemple.mused.org/en/guided/178/luxor-temple Tomb of Queen Meresankh III at Giza: https://giza.mused.org/en/guided/4/tomb-of-queen-meresankh-iii-g-7530-7540 https://giza.mused.org/en/guided/4/tomb-of-queen-meresankh-i... I've mostly been working around the Mediterranean, Central America, and Eastern Asia. I'll publish articles on our blog as the next come out in the future https://blog.mused.org/ https://blog.mused.org/
- ndr 4y ago
  I'm going on a tour in Luxor & other places in Egypt tomorrow. This amazing, thank you!
  - lukehollis 4y ago
    Thanks for visiting! Let me know if you have any feedback or questions
  - hi 4y ago
    @ndr I was just there earlier this year and would like to recommend a guide named Mohamed [redacted] to you (and anyone else who is visiting that area) who we met there and spent two days with in Luxor (Karnak & Luxor Temple) and driving down to Aswan (via Esna, Al Sharawna, El Kab and Edfu) from Luxor. Mobile: [redacted]
    - zacharycohn 4y ago
      maybe don't post someone's phone number on the public internet without permission?
      - atdrummond 4y ago
        This guide advertises his number for this purpose, as do most of the local guides. No worse than it being posted on Yelp, LonelyPlanet, etc.
mortenjorck 4y ago
Incredible work bringing so many moving parts together to make such a seamless, immersive experience. Online museums have been an aspiration since the early days of the web, and this exhibit sets a new bar. One slight hiccup I noticed: The guided tour frequently clips through the geometry, which breaks the immersion a bit. I don't know if the Matterport SDK has any facilities for following paths rather than a straight line when automatically navigating, but if it's possible, it would be a nice addition.
- kridsdale2 4y ago
  And if it doesn't, it's a request they should be happy to take on for academic work like this. They should recognize they have a big opportunity for great PR gains by officially supporting this kind of project, which could feed back to their primary real estate based business.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks for the feedback—this is partly due to the way I built the scan tour points. Can revise in the future.
- thomasahle 4y ago
  What system are you on? With Chrome 106 on a 2019 Mac Book Pro the website is completely unusable at 1 frame per 2 seconds...
  - anthk 4y ago
    Type in about:flags in the Chrome URL bar. Search for "Override software rendering list". Set it to "Enable". Restart Chrome.
ibdf 4y ago
I'm impressed with the sharpness and the amount of detail you captured and the web tour transitions are super smooth too. Great work.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
This is one of the best things I've seen online in years. Thank you so much!
jstanley 4y ago
This is superb! Great work, a really fascinating tour, thanks so much for doing this & for sharing.
guynamedloren 4y ago
Mind blowing. Really well done!
trhoad 4y ago
If you open the image modals, and then click next, I see a blurred screen and cannot progress forward/back. react-dom.production.min.js:209 TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'indexOf') at _l.render (ModalImage.tsx:79:21)
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks! Will get a fix out for this
phasers 4y ago
This gave my PC a BSOD :( Details: Windows 10, Firefox Stop Code - DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL What Failed - nvlddmkm.sys
- kridsdale2 4y ago
  Update your nvidia graphics driver.
nidnogg 4y ago
This is very solid work, really exciting to get this perspective. As someone who's never left his home country and is often thinking of deserts every now and then, it's really inspiring stuff to see. A very slight hiccup - I couldn't find a way to disable the "You're now standing on the blocks [...]" tooltip on Firefox. It's a litle big and immersion breaking - if it'd be shown once that'd be more fitting. While this could be fixed via console, I think it's something to consider.
divbzero 4y ago
If we wanted to build a monument today that would last 4000+ years, how would we do it? Is a large pile of carefully placed rocks still one of the best ways?
- jastanton 4y ago
  Here is one called the 10,000 year clock that is currently under construction (by Jeff Bezos). You can read about it here: https://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.html https://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.html
- newaccount2021 4y ago
erickhill 4y ago
Very cool. I wish there was a 2D "dungeon crawler" map overlay of some kind so I could see where I am and what direction I'm facing as I progress into the structure. I start to lose my bearings. I was fortunate to go inside the pyramid as a child in 1980 when I was 9. I remember it feeling quite claustrophobic at the time, and I wasn't exactly big. Once inside you quickly lose the scale of the thing (or at least I did).
- anthk 4y ago
  I want the reverse. Dungeons generated a la street view for a Nethack ascii map instead of tiles. As the game it's turn based, it would be usable after all even underpowered machines.
  - erickhill 4y ago
    Hah! That would be pretty interesting. I guess the inbetween would be DungeonHack... Be pretty wild to have a 3D interactive Rogue based on GeoGuessr realism.
    - anthk 4y ago
      Like Noegnud but photorealistic: https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Noegnud https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Noegnud https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Noegnud.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Noegnud.jpg With a Street View design (with overlapping monsters/object per "tile", nothing too complex for a shader), the game would be incredible nice for newcomers. And, yes, I prefer ASCII/UTF8.
daggersandscars 4y ago
If you liked this, you may be interested in the Monte Albán Virtual Reality Laboratory (MAVRL) project. (https://montealban.oucreate.com/virtual-reality-2/ https://montealban.oucreate.com/virtual-reality-2/). The site was scanned and put in Unity, allowing them to experiment with different positions of the sun, etc. From the site: In the summer of 2017, a DJI Phantom 4 Pro+ drone was used to take over 15,000 photos of the Main Plaza of Monte Albán. These photos were processed using Agisoft PhotoScan Professional software to digitally reconstruct the Main Plaza and surrounding Architecture producing a photorealistic 3D representation, and other highly accurate maps for archaeological study. A year later, Dr. Alex Elvis Badillo and Dr. Marc N. Levine developed the project MARVL to push the digital data captured in 2017 further beyond mere maps and 3D renderings.
kovek 4y ago
I really like the tool. However, I just hit an issue... Somehow, I was dragging in the view, and it did a text select on the whole view. Now, everything is highlighted blue as if I selected it, and I don't know how to de-select it.
- kridsdale2 4y ago
  That sounds more like a browser issue.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks for the feedback--and I'll test and try to replicate.
- gunapologist99 4y ago
  Usually you can single-click on any non-link text (which admittedly can be hard to find in an SPA!) to un-highlight the selected text.
smusamashah 4y ago
You should try processing your photo dataset with a NERF based tool. They are much better at rebuilding the 3D structure from set of images. EDIT: There is this for example https://github.com/nerfstudio-project/nerfstudio https://github.com/nerfstudio-project/nerfstudio
- kridsdale2 4y ago
  I want the future version of Google Earth or whatever to be the whole globe at a pixel resolution with this kind of technology.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks so much—I’ll try this out!
- yaddaor 4y ago
  That's inventing details that don't exist in the data though, correct?
  - smusamashah 4y ago
    Don't think so. Pictures have to be taken from multiple angles with overlaps so that summing them up contain the whole thing.
heavyheavy 4y ago
This has to be one of the most incredible things i have even seen. Thank you so much for this experience.
whycombinetor 4y ago
This is really cool. Free explore is really immersive. The guided tour would be better if the movement was on rails instead of glitching through walls though.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks for the feedback—I’ll adjust the tour points and transitions in the future to try to prevent this.
dandigangi 4y ago
This is so cool. I went to the pyramids last Xmas for the firs time. Great project. Sincerely.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Cheers and thanks for checking it out. I’m super curious: how does the virtual tour compare to your experience on site?
  - dandigangi 4y ago
    Very good! I'll never forget climbing those stairs, the tunnels, angles, etc. It was very interesting. No way someone with any bit of claustrophobia is getting up there. It was a little underwhelming getting to the tomb but still cool none the less. Experience you did here felt on point. I almost gave my ticket to a guy faking working there. Haha
bragr 4y ago
This appears not to work under Brave due to a strict CORS policy. The call to https://static.matterport.com/geoip/ https://static.matterport.com/geoip/ is throwing a MissingAllowOriginHeader.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks for letting me know—I use Brave also but must have it configured differently. Will test in the future.
ugh123 4y ago
>"The ancient historians, like Herodotos, that recorded Khufu, mention that he was a fierce and stern ruler." >"These accounts are from over 2,000 years after Khufu lived, however, so we might not be able to believe them." I thought that second sentence was an unnecessary take.
- motoxpro 4y ago
  I thought it provided context for the first sentence. I was glad it was there.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  A lot of readers probably don't have a rough idea of how old many of the major Ancient Egyptian monumental works were by the time the Greek Classical period began and we started getting a substantial amount of surviving Western literature outside monumental inscriptions and tax records and stuff like that.
sandreas 4y ago
This is just awesome... Thank you!
JofArnold 4y ago
Incredible. Thank you so much for that. What an incredible project and one I think will make a huge impact for years. Question. I noticed a very unusual experience I've not felt before in a 3D world; I started to feel claustrophobic - so much so I had to close the tab. I'm curious; has anyone else experienced the same do you know? If so, any ideas why it should be so powerful a feeling in this particular case?
- lukehollis 4y ago
  That’s super interesting—thanks for the feedback. I’m really curious if others have felt this also.
  - Ensorceled 4y ago
    Definitely count at least one more person experiencing claustrophobia ...
  - goldthwait 4y ago
    Yes! I felt the same and I was going to write a separate comment on that before I found this conversation. I don't know how you managed to crawl(?) through all those tunnels but it just made me sick following through the guided tour. Besides this personal note, I think this is an amazing work! Very informative, the transitions are well-thought and smooth. Thank you for sharing it with us.
    - lukehollis 4y ago
      Thanks so much for visiting and the feedback. Yep, I was crawling on hands and knees through the horizontal passageways--especially getting to the Subterranean Chamber was tight. After crawling down the horizontal passage, I was accidentally locked in the Queens Chamber for about an half an hour before the guards came and let me out. Maybe we should have a content warning on the tour somewhere and for those in the future that have tunnel systems / confined spaces.. I'm sorry for everyone that felt claustrophobic during this tour!
- Ensorceled 4y ago
c7DJTLrn 4y ago
Egyptology is so fascinating. When I was in primary school, the teacher did a really special lesson I'll never forget. The classroom was decorated like a tomb - the windows were blacked out and the tables were arranged in a way that we had to crawl in to start the lesson. We went through puzzles and explored pyramids on the projector. When some pupils were distracted by the table tunnel, the teacher stayed in the character of an archeologist and warned them to keep away for the tunnel may collapse at any moment. Now that's teaching.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Sounds like a great teacher! Not in Egypt but elsewhere a tunnel collapsed on me + 4 really incredible people on site helping with the scan. We dug ourselves out with our hands. Your teacher knew the real deal.
  - c7DJTLrn 4y ago
    She was very good at her job. Glad you made it out, wow. What a story.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
alberth 4y ago
My takeaways: - From the entrance, all the way to the Grand Gallery ... it doesn't not feel like that was an intended entrance path. It gives the vibe of an auxiliary tunnel (not main path). - It's extremely "industrial". For what historians claim to be a monument, there's not a single hieroglyphic that I saw. It was the opposite of being ornate or lavish. - There's numerous deep groves intended to guide something large carved into the granite in many of the larger spaces (like immediately outside the Kings Chambers). Similar to what you'd find in a Steel Mill to guide large hot containers. It appears as if this was a structure used to manufacturer something (not a tomb of a pharaoh). See previous point. Note: I'm not trying to spread rumors or create speculation. Just my observations from viewing this incredible 3D scan (much appreciation to the author for capturing this incredible marvel)
- LiamPa 4y ago
  It’s a power station, have a read of ‘The Giza Power Plant’
  - elktea 4y ago
    I enjoy reading far out theories like these. I recently[1] saw one that claimed all the weird tunnels that terminate just short of the outside resemble wave guides, the big tunnel with the grooves was a low pass filter and the whole structure was basically a giant antenna Any electrical engineers around feel like modelling it seeing how true it is? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb0zGX2gJIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb0zGX2gJIY
    - wl 4y ago
      You wouldn't make an inverted-inverted-V antenna out of waveguide. The whole point of waveguide is to be a transmission line, not a radiating element. Even if we ignore that, a dipole antenna of those dimensions is two orders of magnitude larger than what you'd use to radiate on the hydrogen line.
- mdswanson 4y ago
  It says "We're entering today through a Robber's Tunnel, a tunnel that some believe was created in 820 AD by Caliph al-Ma'mun, when he was trying to break into the pyramid."
thrdbndndn 4y ago
This is incredible. The image quality is also super high. Just a quick question out of curiosity: how easy is it to get access of it? Or maybe you worked/collaborated with other orgs to makes it easier?
Keyframe 4y ago
Fantastic! Thanks for this. Do you plan to open the raw data you collected for others to tinker with it?
mseepgood 4y ago
I expected ornaments, wall paintings, hieroglyphics - at least in the burial chamber - but nothing. Just a plain sarcophagus.
amatecha 4y ago
Clicking "Explore" button does nothing for me -- what is it supposed to do? When I load the page I can see the following JS error in the console: Uncaught TypeError: o is undefined <anonymous> AbstractPlugin.js:12 Running Firefox latest Win10, "strict" Browser Privacy settings.
- akiselev 4y ago
  It looks like I have a related failure. Latest iOS Safari with DNS level adblocking.
Ensorceled 4y ago
Serious claustrophobia on a 4k monitor, had a reduce the window size. Very awesome.
throwaway094534 4y ago
This is so neat! I was curious about the graffiti that could be seen, and wondered at what periods it was accessible, and to what degree. My only comments: - we clip through the walls sometimes - I would have liked to travel a little more slowly sometimes - some kind of indication of horizon (like airplane attitude guage to get a sense of how steeply we are descending?
flyosity 4y ago
This is truly incredible, I can't wait to show this to my kids after school. Thank you so much for doing this work.
- UberFly 4y ago
  Agreed. My only comment is just how cool this is. Wow.
pencilguin 4y ago
The King's Chamber measures 10x20x10 cubits, as precisely as Egyptians could cut stone, providing us a very precise measure of the builders' cubit. By outstanding coincidence, the chamber is exactly 5pi/3 meters wide. (This also equals 2phi² meters.) The diagonal from corner to opposite corner is 10+sqrt(2) meters, to three places. The ancient Egyptians would have been awed by such coincidences. Us, not so much. I don't know of anyplace where ancient Egyptians demonstrated knowledge of phi, which has the wondrous properties that 1/phi+1=phi=phi²-1. They could of course measure pi as precisely as they liked just by tracing a big circle. Some people make a big deal about the perimeter of its base matching its height times 2pi, and about ratios of these dimensions to the sizes of the Earth, Moon, and Sun. Khafre's is a bit smaller, so its ratios would be off.
imagineerschool 4y ago
The 'mystery' chamber in the base of the Great Pyramid is a functioning pulse pump - this researcher measured it and built a scale replica: https://sentinelkennels.com/Research_Article_V41.html https://sentinelkennels.com/Research_Article_V41.html The mechanisms of the Great Pyramid can only be conjectured about in the present day because of the extensive damage to the structure, but it's pretty clear it served /some/ purpose.
- deleted 4y ago
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- hfo 4y ago
  > but it's pretty clear it served /some/ purpose. One would think the sarcophagus in the center would give away what that purpose could have been...
GNOMES 4y ago
Site seems based on selling these custom tours, is there a link to all of the existing (free) ones?
Balgair 4y ago
Wow! Just wow! I really hope to see it in person now! Quick question: Do you wear the Indiana Jones hat while scanning? Because I know I couldn't pass up that chance.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  I listen to the Pyramid Song by Radiohead on headphones :) couldn’t pass up either.
dwringer 4y ago
This is absolutely fantastic, the only thing I note with some sadness is that the well shaft leading down from the entrance tunnel of the Queen's Chamber is not mapped. The grated-off hole leading down into it is visible and the model does show a cavity there, but there is also a chamber (called the "Grotto" in old diagrams) partway down which is said to have been at the top of the limestone mound on which the pyramid is built. Was it not permitted to access this area?
- hfo 4y ago
  EDIT: I was wrong, it's all there. Amazing! Also missing: The horizontal passage, the queens chamber, the descending passage, the lower chamber and the passage to the relieving chambers of the kings chamber. They're all not accessible for tourists. The tour covers what you would see as a normal visitor (not ie an archeologist with special permission).
  - dwringer 4y ago
    That's not entirely true - both the queen's chamber as well as the descending passage are indeed mapped (though the very upper part of the descending passage is blocked). There's a note when entering the descending passage: "This is normally blocked off to visitors, but we can visit in our tour!" If you didn't get to them by clicking through the photos, you can click the lower left "Dollhouse mode" icon to get a 3d viewer, in which these things are visible. They are both included on the "guided tour" mode, however, if you just load the page and click through the prompts in the middle. I was hoping that the OP might reply to provide more insight on what specific restrictions there might have been, considering some special permissions appear to have been granted. It presents as a bit of a mystery since the site claims "for the first time ever, explore the full interior" and makes no mention of any missing areas.
spencercwood 4y ago
Dang this is rad, thank you for sharing!
stvnbn 4y ago
This is awesome! It's like being there. I always wanted a tour. Thank you!
TheBigSalad 4y ago
This is amazing!
CobrastanJorji 4y ago
I'd love to hear about the process you went through to get something like this approved. I am very curious and slightly scared of the sort of red tape that is involved for a proposal that starts "I'd like to do something to the Great Pyramid," even if it's as innocuous as taking pictures. Or was it maybe a right place right time sort of thing where you were there with an existing scientific investigation and it was significantly simplified.
hfo 4y ago
For anyone interested in the great pyramid, here is a book recommendation (free), IMHO it surpasses even the gold standard "Maragioglio and Rinaldi" (M&R). Unfortunately on that horrible academia.edu site: https://www.academia.edu/72468121/The_Great_Pyramid_Part_1_A_Laymans_guide https://www.academia.edu/72468121/The_Great_Pyramid_Part_1_A... https://www.academia.edu/75544329/The_Great_Pyramid_Part_2_A_Laymans_guide https://www.academia.edu/75544329/The_Great_Pyramid_Part_2_A...
club_tropical 4y ago
This is exactly what is needed in archeology. High quality imaging & survey, not historical speculations tied up with this or that professor’s ego-driven “school of thought”.
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  Exactly, share the facts not interpretations
- mattfrommars 4y ago
  This is by far the best and most enjoyable experience I tend to have in VR. Meta Quesr is an incredible piece of device to experience this in. I can't wait to fire mine up and enjoy this ;)
  - snailmailman 4y ago
    I just tried it in VR on my Quest 2, and while it was neat, it was only photospheres, and wasn't really 3D. very disorienting. Weird because there is clearly a 3d model, but in VR everything seems to be a fixed distance away. I think this is a matterport limitation?
    - lukehollis 4y ago
      Thanks for trying it and pointing this out--I haven't been working on the VR version for this reason. The web viewer provides movement through 360 photos instead of the 3d model.
Bellend 4y ago
I really really enjoyed this and the information. Thank you so much for putting the time in to make it. I doubt I will ever see the Pyramids but I always wanted to and this was the closest I will likely get. My mind is blown by the whole topic.
shmerl 4y ago
Moving with arrow keys is very cool!
1970-01-01 4y ago
Very cool! I suggest pairing with the Myst soundtrack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zboL71iRFBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zboL71iRFBE
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mwidell 4y ago
Wow! After going through this tour, I feel like I don't need to visit in real life. I can imagine an "IRL" tour wouldn't be as good, with queues, lots of other tourists, etc. This was the best virtual visit experience I have ever had, to any real world place. Kudos!
- sdbrady 4y ago
  Having been inside earlier this year, you would be doing yourself a huge disservice not visiting this IRL. Yes, the visual fidelity of this is amazing, but there are a lot of intangibles missing (i.e., the sonic resonance).
matthewhartmans 4y ago
This is super well done! Going through the pyramid brought back so many amazing memories. Had such a great trip here and because of this, I got to experience it again. The website interactions are silky smooth and beautifully done and the image quality is just incredible! Thanks for putting this together!
alanwreath 4y ago
I wish looking straight up wasn't blurry, I know this is a common problem with 360 camera's but I'd hoped that a camera of this caliber would account for it (even if with a little stitching) EDIT: I didn't say it (it goes without saying), but this is awesome, especially as a work of preservation.
- samplatt 4y ago
  It's using a [Matterport camera](https://www.amazon.com.au/Matterport-Professional-Experiences-Architecture-Construction/dp/B08B2Q3S85 https://www.amazon.com.au/Matterport-Professional-Experience...) - they capture from 3 vertical directions (+45.deg, level, and -45.deg), and then rotates in a circle. Though the technical limitations are frustrating, the end result tends to be much higher quality than other, more manual software pipelines. Not to mention _significantly_ easier to process.
herdymerzbow 4y ago
Amazing stuff. Very immersive. Didn't think I would ever get to see inside the pyramids and while this isn't quite like being there in person, it does help scratch the itch. Your tour gives a much greater sense of their scale due to the length of the tunnels you have to navigate. Meanwhile I have seen them from the air while flying from Dubai to Europe. We flew over Cairo and I managed to spot them, which I was very pleased about and began my first step into unconventional ways of appreciating the pyramids.
qq66 4y ago
Is this available in VR?
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Yes, you should be able to open the link in a VR headset with the in-headset web browser and then fullscreen to move through the 360 images in the virtual tour Free Explore mode if you like it, but I've only been working on supporting the web experience on desktop/mobile.
jbverschoor 4y ago
Super cool. How difficult was it to scan? I’m tend off walking and post processing
- lukehollis 4y ago
  It was a challenging scan--but not very large. The toughest part was working around the tourists.
ridgeguy 4y ago
Thank you so much for your work! I loaded your tour of the Great Pyramid onto my laptop and settled into bed next to my wife, who is recovering from knee replacement surgery. I said "May I take you to Egypt for awhile?". She loved it! I really appreciate the effort you've put into giving access to historically important sites fir those of us who are unlikely to visit in person.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  I love this story, and thanks for visiting & sharing! I hope she makes a quick recovery. If it's interesting apart from the other scans I mentioned in the comments, one of the favorite places that I've worked is in the Sinai at St Catherine's Monastery: https://stcatherines.mused.org/en/ https://stcatherines.mused.org/en/ has three scans of the Holy Summit of Mt Sinai, Burning Bush/Monastery, and Monastery Museum.
_dark_matter_ 4y ago
Just amazing. I "walked" through with my kids (8 & 10 years old), and they couldn't get enough. They read every piece of text and wanted to go on to the next tour! We'll have to wait for another day. Thank you!
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soheilpro 4y ago
This is amazing. Thank you!
xzatious 4y ago
Really wonderful experience. I don't comment here much but this is really great. Bravo.
qersist3nce 4y ago
Thanks for the amazing work! Here are my notes: 1- Actual surveying of the site was a bit annoying. On one hand, I wanted to scan everything and look at every detail. On the other, I didn't know where I was and didn't want to miss out by my depth-first approach. The automatic surveying routine (clicking next) moves the camera way too fast. Also I guess it doesn't present everything we know of the site. For example I wanted to have a more clear look at the shafts. So A) provide a minimap for every detail we know of the site to make idealists of us, happy :) B) slow down the speed of auto-surveyor. I experienced these same technical problems while traversing the Perspolis site: https://persepolis.getty.edu/ https://persepolis.getty.edu/ 2- What's with the utility wiring in the King's chamber? Is it customary in archeological sites? I thought it should have been done more neatly. Also, do the "cosmic ray detectors" work by battery power in those wooden boxes? Is there a rule that scientific instruments should be in wooden boxes? 3- How do we know what the main purpose of the Great Pyramid was? Why were the chambers named as King or Queen's chamber when we didn't find any mummies or hieroglyphs inside? This question especially becomes important when we don't know what the purpose of those clear-cut shafts in chambers was. 4- As an archeologist, what do you think of the works of Erich von Daniken or the claims that ancient human technology couldn't have cut those clear cuts or moved those giant stones? 5- Before seeing this, I just woke up early from a nightmare. I rule out most of it due my brain mixing my personal experiences of the day and university. But, the strange part of that dream was that at the end of it, someone trapped someone else (like in a dome wire-frame cage that is used in catching birds) , and I heard a serious stern voice ordering him to "dig". Next up I woke up and saw this on HN, deciding to have a virtual visit of the internal chambers of the Great Pyramid. Phew! What a coincidence!
- piceas 4y ago
  On mobile, for the tour, I found the camera moved a bit quickly and would also cut corners. I think it would be helpful to break the movement down a bit and add intermediate positions. Rotate camera, move along in the direction that your head might realistically travel through the space, and then a final rotation at the destination if needed.
808 4y ago
A most excellent series of resources tied together in a thoughtfully refined fashion. Managed to get it working on an ancient 10yr old 'droid mobile with latest FF, likewise on a decade old tablet in latest Brave. Not sure if you have any intention of scanning the Hawara complex, but if you can gain access to the below discussed datasets, & if there were any chance of linking your modelling to these scans, it would make a mindblowing visit to the underworld! Scans of beneath Hawara are discussed by Dr Carmen Boulter & Klaus Dona here: https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=hw1RSYIgr3I https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=hw1RSYIgr3I As others have said, Muon scans have revealed hidden details in the Great Pyramid, but I have heard less chatter about these Hawara studies from 2014-15, regarding multiple long-distance water tunnels, possibly linking back to Giza & the water beneath the Great Pyramid. When linked to the historic water damage around the base of the sphynx, the water separation/hydrogen power station theories suggested by various physicists (& HN posters) seem less fantastical. A feeder into the Great Pyramid (the specific name escapes, but can be seen as a peaked entrance towards one side) from these waters would cascade down through the complex & onwards towards Hawara, possibly explaining why the water under Giza & in the inland lake at Hawara are saline, but neither chemically match Nile or Med' waters. Keep up the good work. ^_^
gaurav_k 4y ago
This does not work well on Brave browser - keeps reloading. Will definitely check it on my desktop though, looks super cool
botanical 4y ago
This is amazing! It reminds me of exploring with Encarta as a child. Only one minor annoyance is it uses imperial units. Also it would be nice to know the temperature at the subterranean chamber
Schinken_ 4y ago
Amazing work! Ever since I watched the documentary about the ScanPyramids Project I've been waiting for a full 3D Scan (moreso even for a VR Project, but that's only a small step from this). I figured they were probably not allowed to publish their scans, so this is a nice surprise. This looks a bit "segmented" to me? As in, the scanned parts are not necessarily 100% overlapping (and resulting in a single union model?). Nonetheless amazing work. If you're interested in VR compatibility, I believe A-Frame (https://aframe.io/ https://aframe.io/) (also threejs and webbased IIRC) might do the trick.
pabs3 4y ago
The Mused jobs link points at the blog, is that intentional?
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks, I'll update this--I've been working with a few of my friends this year, and I think we're still looking for product-market fit so haven't been thinking of hiring recently. Maybe since 19th and 20th century archaeologists have a sometimes terrible track record (Elgin Marbles, Benin Bronzes, etc.), it's important to not be similarly extractive with the 3d data now but instead find ways to connect the local and international communities using the laser scans. That's one of the areas we're exploring next.
  - pabs3 4y ago
    I noticed you have released some source code on GitLab, but it appears to be all rights reserved (no license information in the repo), but is also still viewable by the public, did you mean to make it a private project on GitLab instead?
djmips 4y ago
This is awesome. I desire a high res skybox at the entrance so I can take one look back out onto the Central Field before I delve inside. It would add to the experience! Great job though I love stuff like this.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Great idea--I'll see if I can head back out to capture this along with more of the path to get to the Robber's Tunnel.
mnw21cam 4y ago
I'm getting a nice video flyby of the outside of the pyramid, and a spinny thing at the bottom that says loading, and has done since last night. Chromium 106.0.5249.119 on Debian, JS is switched on, webgl works correctly. Edit: I should also note that in the console I also get stats.g.doubleclick.net…AAI~&z=1802238861:1 Failed to load resource: net::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID
zengineer 4y ago
Wow, this is how a digital trip to a museum should be! Really well done and interesting - not giving too much information at the same time.
mikestaub 4y ago
Any plans to upload a highres photogrammetry model to be explored with webXR?
downboots 4y ago
Out of curiosity, if you were to extend the lines of the chamber tunnels would it reach an interesting place in the earth or sky? Could the angles carry meaning?
lukehollis 4y ago
In case anyone comes across this in the future, I finished the blog about the process here: https://blog.mused.org/building-a-guided-tour-of-the-great-pyramid-digitizing-khufu-pyramid-interior-with-harvards-giza-project/ https://blog.mused.org/building-a-guided-tour-of-the-great-p... Thanks to the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, especially Doctor Wael Fathy and Inspector Ezzat Salama at the Giza Plateau who worked on site with me this summer. And thanks again to everyone here for visiting and the feedback!

1752 points by lukehollis 4y ago

terhechte 4y ago

This is really really cool! I enjoyed the explanations as well as the fantastic images

lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks for visiting!

massinstall 4y ago

I’m curious to see it but FYI it doesn’t work on an iPhone with Firefox (you can never get past the first screen).

elliotpo 4y ago
i am using it on an iPhone with Firefox right now
cormullion 4y ago
Works fine on my iPad too...

site-packages1 4y ago

I am amazed by this. I’ve been playing with a 3D scanning app on iPhone as a total amateur and totally new to the mode of collection and it truly produces amazing results with only iPhone lidar. Scaniverse if you’re curious.

lukehollis 4y ago
Very cool, I know Scaniverse! I think the lower bar to entry for digitization has already been transformative for preservation, conservation, and site education at heritage sites like these.
ridgeguy 4y ago
The new version claims not to even need the LIDAR.

monksy 4y ago

My work network classifies this site as adult content.

petargyurov 4y ago

That is insanely cool. The dollhouse view is nice. It would be great if you could see a 2D schematic of where you are in the pyramid as you're exploring. Incredible job!

citrons 4y ago
Actually liked that it lacked a minimap. Got a better sense of scale. After going trough most of the tunnels and getting stuck and kings chamber there, couldn't crawl back, I zomemed out and was shocked by the scale of the tunnels.
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks to you both for feedback on the minimap--this is one that we've had some requests for but I haven't started on yet.

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JohnJamesRambo 4y ago

Oh wow, thank you for doing this. I’ll probably never be able to go to the real thing and this has been a fascination since childhood! I’ve got every part memorized from a book I had that had line drawings of the chambers.

hatsubishi 4y ago

Is it possible to see it in VR?

seydor 4y ago
Works great with Quest2 , and it s amazing
- Bad_CRC 4y ago
  with the normal browser?
  - seydor 4y ago
    Yes Matterport always worked well for me. Surprisingly i have found that some other startups in the VR real estate space do not work at all with the Quest. It's very odd to build a product that doesnt work with the (by far) most popular headset
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

sneak 4y ago

What is the reason that Mixpanel and GTM are on this page? Is there a specific reason that such invasive tracking is required for an educational resource that does not generate revenue?

mikebonnell 4y ago
They likely use some of the metrics to continue to get grant funding. You gave us $1m in grant money which we used to produce this webpage which has XXX millions of views. I'm sure other tools would suffice but given it's a project at Harvard, they may have institutional requirements.

easytiger 4y ago

Incredible. Going through this gave me similar sentiments to when i first used my school library copy of Encarta 98. Question: there are some blurred out areas, how come? e.g. https://imgur.com/a/6Ca5EYG https://imgur.com/a/6Ca5EYG

mkl 4y ago
I think it's just that the scanner doesn't look straight up.
jackcarter 4y ago
Camera limitation – it doesn't capture a full sphere. That's exactly the spot where I also noticed it.
- easytiger 4y ago
  ahh, of course. thanks

nimrody 4y ago

Beautiful! Thanks for doing this work. Can you explain a bit on the process that was used to create this? How do you determine your position inside the pyramid precisely? (would make for a great dungeon-style game :)

joshvm 4y ago
I've used the BLK 360 before so some comment here. Essentially you scan at various points within the volume of interest, e.g. you walk around, place the scanner, scan, repeat. Each scan takes a few minutes at high angular resolution. Leica provides software called Register (or Cyclone) to match the scans together. Because you generally don't have GPS (the BLK doesn't have a GPS onboar and GPS is anyway much more inaccurate than the scan resolution - metres versus millimetres), the software has to do some kind of feature matching to stitch the scans. You get "links" between adjacent scanning points, and then you do a big optimisation pass to combine the scans. This scan matching is by far the most difficult and time consuming bit. Probably OP had to manually align the scans as a first pass and then the software takes over using some algorithm like ICP (iterative closest point). This is still only "internal" (i.e. scans are correct relative to each other, but you don't know where the full scan is) and you'd have to combine with an external reference point to geo-locate in the world. Doesn't really matter for this because you're just viewing the pyramid on its own, and you're not overlaying on a map. If you were, then usually what you have to do is take several ground control point (GCP) that are known with high accuracy and then reference that in the scan. You could geo-reference these using an RTK GPS or something, but it's quite difficult to get world coordinates at the millimetre scale and it rarely matters if you're that precise as long as the scan itself is consistent. This video from Leica shows the full workflow for a typical use case (scanning a house with indoor and outdoor points). Note the point where they link inside and outside, around 16 mins in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV0LPKowOXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV0LPKowOXU
- bambax 4y ago
  Complete newbie here, but wouldn't it be possible to affix some marks on the walls to help with the stitching afterwards?

layer8 4y ago

The page crashes for me on iOS.

malteof 4y ago
Same! iPhone 12 on latest iOS.
- ErneX 4y ago
  Try tapping the “aA” on the URL bar and disable content blockers.
  - layer8 4y ago
    Doesn’t help.
    - zach_garwood 4y ago
      - alex_suzuki 4y ago
        What’s with the passive-aggressive unhelpful Apple-hating comments? Just users of a browser with 20% of mobile market share, reporting a bug. And btw, I can confirm this crashes for me some way into the pyramid (iOS 16).
moffkalast 4y ago
That is so odd, after all Safari is known to have wide support for everything. /s
lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks for letting me know!

ryanmarr 4y ago

Where are the puzzles that open the door to the linking book?

robmerki 4y ago

This is absolutely amazing work. I have been searching for something exactly like this for quite some time. I am beyond thrilled that this now exists. THANK YOU.

lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks for visiting! There are a few of these scans in the works that I linked in the comments if they're interesting for Ancient Egypt or elsewhere.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Same feelings. I've been fascinated by ancient Egypt as long as I can remember and this is just about perfect.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

That's cool! Thanks for sharing it!

neoneye2 4y ago

Well made. Amazing to explore. Much appreciated. Tested in my Firefox 106.0.1 on macOS Monterey 12.6, and it works great.

ErneX 4y ago

Crashes on my iPhone 13 Pro running latest iOS version / Safari. Update: turning off content blockers solves the crashing issue.

_joel 4y ago

Awesome work! I've been in there and one of the things missing is the change it humidity and temperature that hits you, maybe on the next revision ;)

lukehollis 4y ago
Uff too real. I worked up a sweat on this one

sdo72 4y ago

This is very amazing. Thank you very much!

lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks for visiting & feedback!

runjake 4y ago

As many others have commented. My first thought was "Amazing!" The only thing I encountered is that my mouse wheel scrolling was a bit too touchy and I kept accidentally zooming too much into a 3D scene while scrolling the text. But that doesn't really matter, because this is amazingly cool.

green-eclipse 4y ago

This is amazing! Incredible work! Thank you for doing this project. FYI I found a typo - the word "cuts": > It's 750 by 750 feet at the base and is made of over 2 million large, limestone blocks cuts from the surrounding area. Also - from one of the angles shown, it looks like there's a golf course next to the pyramids? Not at all what I expected!

lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks! And haha yes, definitely visit Giza someday--it's an incredible place to work.
groffee 4y ago
There's a pizza hut across the road as well lol

mkl 4y ago

This is great! I noticed a few apostrophes missing in the captions in "King's Chamber" and "Queen's Chamber".

lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks for visiting&feedback--will get this fixed!

kodah 4y ago

This was a really cool experience. Thanks for putting this together.

sizzzzlerz 4y ago

Such a small volume of rooms and tunnels compared to the volume of the pyramid itself. The labor required is unimaginable.

cush 4y ago

Aaaaand the site crashes in ios safari

timbit42 4y ago
That doesn't mean there is a problem with the website.

cryptozeus 4y ago

I an sure its good, doesn’t work on safari on ios 16

zach_garwood 4y ago
That sounds like an Apple problem. Works perfectly on Firefox on Android, not to mention Chromium on Linux.

soared 4y ago

Incredible! I was under the impression there were tons of passages and chambers that were intricate, thank you for teaching me otherwise!

tmilard 4y ago

It's nice. Maybe the best matterport's example I have seen so far... The 3D in the transitions [of two 360 photos] are really good and the pixel quality is great. But still... The very limited part of Matterport is that it is "mostly" a series of 360 photos. Now, because a pyramid is mainly a long corridor, you do not see too much those limitations. So great. Thierry, developper of https://free-visit.net/ https://free-visit.net/

arnaudsm 4y ago
It's not only 2D 360, there's full 3D photogrammetry. Click on the dollhouse button on the bottom left.
lukehollis 4y ago
I hear you--I think this is limitation is useful for bandwidth/loading time constraints.

HPsquared 4y ago

Semi-related, the Great Pyramid was also scanned using muon radiography, by which a "big void" was discovered [0]. Muons can penetrate through a lot of material, so they can see through very large, thick things like the pyramids. Muon tomography was also used to scan the Fukushima reactors [1] and see where the fuel ended up. [0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.01576.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.01576.pdf [1] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Muons-suggest-location-of-fuel-in-unit-3-0210174.html https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Muons-suggest-location...

zppln 4y ago
Looks like that gear is still there (in the bedrock chamber) scanning. The 3D tour mentions it.
anshumankmr 4y ago
A void? Is it another chamber? I have so many questions. Though from the images, it doesn't seem like a chamber. https://www.livescience.com/scan-great-pyramid-of-giza https://www.livescience.com/scan-great-pyramid-of-giza
- klausjensen 4y ago
  I bet it's the aliens' server-room.
  - simonh 4y ago
    Cryopod/Egg chamber.
  - anshumankmr 4y ago
    Is there any non invasive way to see the interior of the chamber? I hope we are aren't gonna leave it be.
    - LeifCarrotson 4y ago
      To whom do you refer to with "we"? I hope we leave it be until we develop the tech to measure it non-invasively. The tech available to Napoleon's Egyptologists or the British in the 1800s would not have allowed him to do it. They would have picked up anything they could carry and brought it back to Room 4 in the British Museum. Our tech in 2022 does not currently allow us to see the interior of the chamber more precisely than "there's a void there." It's likely to not have been breached for millenia, it would be positively criminal to drill to it. I say wait a couple hundred years until some future archaeologist will have a neutrino or muon scanner with sufficient resolution to read the hieroglyphics. It'll keep.

andybak 4y ago

Thank you. Is the scan data available and if so - under what licence?

cjauvin 4y ago

Many years ago I had the chance to visit the Pyramid of Giza but when it was time to go inside it, I've been instantly stopped by my visualization of how I would feel in this tight and claustrophobic space (almost crouching in some places, I've been told), especially if there are many people at the same time, and you cannot easily move.. So I'm very glad to be able to finally see it with such an amazing technology, thanks!

lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks so much for this feedback—providing accessibility for these spaces is a huge concern for our future work.

fipar 4y ago

This is amazing, thanks for sharing!

rqtwteye 4y ago

Nice! I was just there last week. Are there any efforts to scan the ground in places like Saqqara? It seems there is still a ton of stuff left in the ground. After seeing the pyramids and Luxor I am amazed at the scale and precision the Egyptians were building such a long time ago. Truly impressive.

lukehollis 4y ago
That's awesome! I wonder if we crossed paths. Are you still in Eg? I've worked with projects at Saqqara and Luxor too, some of it is public and being used for education if it's interesting: Luxor Temple: https://luxortemple.mused.org/en/guided/178/luxor-temple https://luxortemple.mused.org/en/guided/178/luxor-temple

MichaelZuo 4y ago

Great work, though the images of the entrance seems to be split into hundreds of tiny pieces, what's up with that?

dekhn 4y ago

Originally, the exterior of the pyramid was covered in polished limestone (casement) that has since fallen off/been removed. Apparently you would have been able to see them from many miles off as incredibly bright triangles.

HPsquared 4y ago
I wonder if they'll ever be restored.
- TanguyN 4y ago
  Probably not as that would be quite a... pharaonic task.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    More importantly, the areas are preserved now, not being restored to their former glory. Many of the stones were carted off and used in other buildings, with the rest sitting at the base of the pyramid.

sergiotapia 4y ago

This is incredible thank you so much for sharing this! Something terrifying about how deep underground you go and then you reach a pitch black hole and there's still more to go. Wow! How was it inside? Is it very silent? I imagine it gives off very weird energy.

me_bx 4y ago

Looks pretty cool. Feedback about the 3D navigation experience: * very laggy on Firefox android, on a decent device * very laggy on Firefox linux (Intel graphics) * smooth on Chromium with the same linux (Intel graphics)

tetris11 4y ago
smooth on Firefox in Linux for me, Intel graphics

acdanger 4y ago

Amazing work. I'm also interested in digitizing artifacts and historic places, but haven't been able to figure out how to go about getting a project off the ground. Any chance you'd do a write up explaining how you were able to get this project set up? I'm more interested in the logistics and the red-tape you had to go through in order to get access to do the scans. I see you've got a business setup around it as well, are you hiring? The jobs page leads to the blog right now.

lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks, and yes, I haven't blogged about this yet but will. It's really important that the local teams that make these scans happen are featured prominently. For similar process here's the blog that I wrote about working at Luxor Temple with the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and the University of Chicago: https://blog.mused.org/digitizing-luxor-temple-a-virtual-field-trip-for-students-around-the-globe/ https://blog.mused.org/digitizing-luxor-temple-a-virtual-fie... Drop me a line! I'd love to chat--I'm at luke@mused.org

onemoresoop 4y ago

This is very insightful. Thank you for all your work!!

blobbers 4y ago

AMAZING! Will try it out on a headset, and show it to kids who have been asking mummy questions. Thank you so much!

lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks for trying it out! Would love feedback about how everything works in the headset

whoopdedo 4y ago

Someone lost their hat to the right of the entrance. I was clicking around for quite a while before I realized I could use WASD+arrows.

lukehollis 4y ago
Ah! I think that might've been one of the guard's. I love that Matterport added the WASD+Arrows.

lukehollis 4y ago

Thanks for the feedback! Didn't know if people would like this. If this is interesting, and you'd like to learn more about Ancient Egypt, here are a few more sites that I've worked at: Luxor Temple: https://luxortemple.mused.org/en/guided/178/luxor-temple https://luxortemple.mused.org/en/guided/178/luxor-temple Tomb of Queen Meresankh III at Giza: https://giza.mused.org/en/guided/4/tomb-of-queen-meresankh-iii-g-7530-7540 https://giza.mused.org/en/guided/4/tomb-of-queen-meresankh-i... I've mostly been working around the Mediterranean, Central America, and Eastern Asia. I'll publish articles on our blog as the next come out in the future https://blog.mused.org/ https://blog.mused.org/

ndr 4y ago
I'm going on a tour in Luxor & other places in Egypt tomorrow. This amazing, thank you!
- lukehollis 4y ago
  Thanks for visiting! Let me know if you have any feedback or questions
- hi 4y ago
  @ndr I was just there earlier this year and would like to recommend a guide named Mohamed [redacted] to you (and anyone else who is visiting that area) who we met there and spent two days with in Luxor (Karnak & Luxor Temple) and driving down to Aswan (via Esna, Al Sharawna, El Kab and Edfu) from Luxor. Mobile: [redacted]
  - zacharycohn 4y ago
    maybe don't post someone's phone number on the public internet without permission?
    - atdrummond 4y ago
      This guide advertises his number for this purpose, as do most of the local guides. No worse than it being posted on Yelp, LonelyPlanet, etc.

mortenjorck 4y ago

Incredible work bringing so many moving parts together to make such a seamless, immersive experience. Online museums have been an aspiration since the early days of the web, and this exhibit sets a new bar. One slight hiccup I noticed: The guided tour frequently clips through the geometry, which breaks the immersion a bit. I don't know if the Matterport SDK has any facilities for following paths rather than a straight line when automatically navigating, but if it's possible, it would be a nice addition.

kridsdale2 4y ago
And if it doesn't, it's a request they should be happy to take on for academic work like this. They should recognize they have a big opportunity for great PR gains by officially supporting this kind of project, which could feed back to their primary real estate based business.
lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks for the feedback—this is partly due to the way I built the scan tour points. Can revise in the future.
thomasahle 4y ago
What system are you on? With Chrome 106 on a 2019 Mac Book Pro the website is completely unusable at 1 frame per 2 seconds...
- anthk 4y ago
  Type in about:flags in the Chrome URL bar. Search for "Override software rendering list". Set it to "Enable". Restart Chrome.

ibdf 4y ago

I'm impressed with the sharpness and the amount of detail you captured and the web tour transitions are super smooth too. Great work.

spaceman_2020 4y ago

This is one of the best things I've seen online in years. Thank you so much!

jstanley 4y ago

This is superb! Great work, a really fascinating tour, thanks so much for doing this & for sharing.

guynamedloren 4y ago

Mind blowing. Really well done!

trhoad 4y ago

If you open the image modals, and then click next, I see a blurred screen and cannot progress forward/back. react-dom.production.min.js:209 TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'indexOf') at _l.render (ModalImage.tsx:79:21)

lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks! Will get a fix out for this

phasers 4y ago

This gave my PC a BSOD :( Details: Windows 10, Firefox Stop Code - DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL What Failed - nvlddmkm.sys

kridsdale2 4y ago
Update your nvidia graphics driver.

nidnogg 4y ago

This is very solid work, really exciting to get this perspective. As someone who's never left his home country and is often thinking of deserts every now and then, it's really inspiring stuff to see. A very slight hiccup - I couldn't find a way to disable the "You're now standing on the blocks [...]" tooltip on Firefox. It's a litle big and immersion breaking - if it'd be shown once that'd be more fitting. While this could be fixed via console, I think it's something to consider.

divbzero 4y ago

If we wanted to build a monument today that would last 4000+ years, how would we do it? Is a large pile of carefully placed rocks still one of the best ways?

jastanton 4y ago
Here is one called the 10,000 year clock that is currently under construction (by Jeff Bezos). You can read about it here: https://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.html https://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.html
newaccount2021 4y ago

erickhill 4y ago

Very cool. I wish there was a 2D "dungeon crawler" map overlay of some kind so I could see where I am and what direction I'm facing as I progress into the structure. I start to lose my bearings. I was fortunate to go inside the pyramid as a child in 1980 when I was 9. I remember it feeling quite claustrophobic at the time, and I wasn't exactly big. Once inside you quickly lose the scale of the thing (or at least I did).

anthk 4y ago
I want the reverse. Dungeons generated a la street view for a Nethack ascii map instead of tiles. As the game it's turn based, it would be usable after all even underpowered machines.
- erickhill 4y ago
  Hah! That would be pretty interesting. I guess the inbetween would be DungeonHack... Be pretty wild to have a 3D interactive Rogue based on GeoGuessr realism.
  - anthk 4y ago
    Like Noegnud but photorealistic: https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Noegnud https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Noegnud https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Noegnud.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Noegnud.jpg With a Street View design (with overlapping monsters/object per "tile", nothing too complex for a shader), the game would be incredible nice for newcomers. And, yes, I prefer ASCII/UTF8.

daggersandscars 4y ago

If you liked this, you may be interested in the Monte Albán Virtual Reality Laboratory (MAVRL) project. (https://montealban.oucreate.com/virtual-reality-2/ https://montealban.oucreate.com/virtual-reality-2/). The site was scanned and put in Unity, allowing them to experiment with different positions of the sun, etc. From the site: In the summer of 2017, a DJI Phantom 4 Pro+ drone was used to take over 15,000 photos of the Main Plaza of Monte Albán. These photos were processed using Agisoft PhotoScan Professional software to digitally reconstruct the Main Plaza and surrounding Architecture producing a photorealistic 3D representation, and other highly accurate maps for archaeological study. A year later, Dr. Alex Elvis Badillo and Dr. Marc N. Levine developed the project MARVL to push the digital data captured in 2017 further beyond mere maps and 3D renderings.

kovek 4y ago

I really like the tool. However, I just hit an issue... Somehow, I was dragging in the view, and it did a text select on the whole view. Now, everything is highlighted blue as if I selected it, and I don't know how to de-select it.

kridsdale2 4y ago
That sounds more like a browser issue.
lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks for the feedback--and I'll test and try to replicate.
gunapologist99 4y ago
Usually you can single-click on any non-link text (which admittedly can be hard to find in an SPA!) to un-highlight the selected text.

smusamashah 4y ago

You should try processing your photo dataset with a NERF based tool. They are much better at rebuilding the 3D structure from set of images. EDIT: There is this for example https://github.com/nerfstudio-project/nerfstudio https://github.com/nerfstudio-project/nerfstudio

kridsdale2 4y ago
I want the future version of Google Earth or whatever to be the whole globe at a pixel resolution with this kind of technology.
lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks so much—I’ll try this out!
yaddaor 4y ago
That's inventing details that don't exist in the data though, correct?
- smusamashah 4y ago
  Don't think so. Pictures have to be taken from multiple angles with overlaps so that summing them up contain the whole thing.

heavyheavy 4y ago

This has to be one of the most incredible things i have even seen. Thank you so much for this experience.

whycombinetor 4y ago

This is really cool. Free explore is really immersive. The guided tour would be better if the movement was on rails instead of glitching through walls though.

lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks for the feedback—I’ll adjust the tour points and transitions in the future to try to prevent this.

dandigangi 4y ago

This is so cool. I went to the pyramids last Xmas for the firs time. Great project. Sincerely.

lukehollis 4y ago
Cheers and thanks for checking it out. I’m super curious: how does the virtual tour compare to your experience on site?
- dandigangi 4y ago
  Very good! I'll never forget climbing those stairs, the tunnels, angles, etc. It was very interesting. No way someone with any bit of claustrophobia is getting up there. It was a little underwhelming getting to the tomb but still cool none the less. Experience you did here felt on point. I almost gave my ticket to a guy faking working there. Haha

bragr 4y ago

This appears not to work under Brave due to a strict CORS policy. The call to https://static.matterport.com/geoip/ https://static.matterport.com/geoip/ is throwing a MissingAllowOriginHeader.

lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks for letting me know—I use Brave also but must have it configured differently. Will test in the future.

ugh123 4y ago

>"The ancient historians, like Herodotos, that recorded Khufu, mention that he was a fierce and stern ruler." >"These accounts are from over 2,000 years after Khufu lived, however, so we might not be able to believe them." I thought that second sentence was an unnecessary take.

motoxpro 4y ago
I thought it provided context for the first sentence. I was glad it was there.
yamtaddle 4y ago
A lot of readers probably don't have a rough idea of how old many of the major Ancient Egyptian monumental works were by the time the Greek Classical period began and we started getting a substantial amount of surviving Western literature outside monumental inscriptions and tax records and stuff like that.

sandreas 4y ago

This is just awesome... Thank you!

JofArnold 4y ago

Incredible. Thank you so much for that. What an incredible project and one I think will make a huge impact for years. Question. I noticed a very unusual experience I've not felt before in a 3D world; I started to feel claustrophobic - so much so I had to close the tab. I'm curious; has anyone else experienced the same do you know? If so, any ideas why it should be so powerful a feeling in this particular case?

lukehollis 4y ago
That’s super interesting—thanks for the feedback. I’m really curious if others have felt this also.
- Ensorceled 4y ago
  Definitely count at least one more person experiencing claustrophobia ...
- goldthwait 4y ago
  Yes! I felt the same and I was going to write a separate comment on that before I found this conversation. I don't know how you managed to crawl(?) through all those tunnels but it just made me sick following through the guided tour. Besides this personal note, I think this is an amazing work! Very informative, the transitions are well-thought and smooth. Thank you for sharing it with us.
  - lukehollis 4y ago
    Thanks so much for visiting and the feedback. Yep, I was crawling on hands and knees through the horizontal passageways--especially getting to the Subterranean Chamber was tight. After crawling down the horizontal passage, I was accidentally locked in the Queens Chamber for about an half an hour before the guards came and let me out. Maybe we should have a content warning on the tour somewhere and for those in the future that have tunnel systems / confined spaces.. I'm sorry for everyone that felt claustrophobic during this tour!
Ensorceled 4y ago

c7DJTLrn 4y ago

Egyptology is so fascinating. When I was in primary school, the teacher did a really special lesson I'll never forget. The classroom was decorated like a tomb - the windows were blacked out and the tables were arranged in a way that we had to crawl in to start the lesson. We went through puzzles and explored pyramids on the projector. When some pupils were distracted by the table tunnel, the teacher stayed in the character of an archeologist and warned them to keep away for the tunnel may collapse at any moment. Now that's teaching.

lukehollis 4y ago
Sounds like a great teacher! Not in Egypt but elsewhere a tunnel collapsed on me + 4 really incredible people on site helping with the scan. We dug ourselves out with our hands. Your teacher knew the real deal.
- c7DJTLrn 4y ago
  She was very good at her job. Glad you made it out, wow. What a story.
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alberth 4y ago

My takeaways: - From the entrance, all the way to the Grand Gallery ... it doesn't not feel like that was an intended entrance path. It gives the vibe of an auxiliary tunnel (not main path). - It's extremely "industrial". For what historians claim to be a monument, there's not a single hieroglyphic that I saw. It was the opposite of being ornate or lavish. - There's numerous deep groves intended to guide something large carved into the granite in many of the larger spaces (like immediately outside the Kings Chambers). Similar to what you'd find in a Steel Mill to guide large hot containers. It appears as if this was a structure used to manufacturer something (not a tomb of a pharaoh). See previous point. Note: I'm not trying to spread rumors or create speculation. Just my observations from viewing this incredible 3D scan (much appreciation to the author for capturing this incredible marvel)

LiamPa 4y ago
It’s a power station, have a read of ‘The Giza Power Plant’
- elktea 4y ago
  I enjoy reading far out theories like these. I recently[1] saw one that claimed all the weird tunnels that terminate just short of the outside resemble wave guides, the big tunnel with the grooves was a low pass filter and the whole structure was basically a giant antenna Any electrical engineers around feel like modelling it seeing how true it is? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb0zGX2gJIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb0zGX2gJIY
  - wl 4y ago
    You wouldn't make an inverted-inverted-V antenna out of waveguide. The whole point of waveguide is to be a transmission line, not a radiating element. Even if we ignore that, a dipole antenna of those dimensions is two orders of magnitude larger than what you'd use to radiate on the hydrogen line.
mdswanson 4y ago
It says "We're entering today through a Robber's Tunnel, a tunnel that some believe was created in 820 AD by Caliph al-Ma'mun, when he was trying to break into the pyramid."

thrdbndndn 4y ago

This is incredible. The image quality is also super high. Just a quick question out of curiosity: how easy is it to get access of it? Or maybe you worked/collaborated with other orgs to makes it easier?

Keyframe 4y ago

Fantastic! Thanks for this. Do you plan to open the raw data you collected for others to tinker with it?

mseepgood 4y ago

I expected ornaments, wall paintings, hieroglyphics - at least in the burial chamber - but nothing. Just a plain sarcophagus.

amatecha 4y ago

Clicking "Explore" button does nothing for me -- what is it supposed to do? When I load the page I can see the following JS error in the console: Uncaught TypeError: o is undefined <anonymous> AbstractPlugin.js:12 Running Firefox latest Win10, "strict" Browser Privacy settings.

akiselev 4y ago
It looks like I have a related failure. Latest iOS Safari with DNS level adblocking.

Ensorceled 4y ago

Serious claustrophobia on a 4k monitor, had a reduce the window size. Very awesome.

throwaway094534 4y ago

This is so neat! I was curious about the graffiti that could be seen, and wondered at what periods it was accessible, and to what degree. My only comments: - we clip through the walls sometimes - I would have liked to travel a little more slowly sometimes - some kind of indication of horizon (like airplane attitude guage to get a sense of how steeply we are descending?

flyosity 4y ago

This is truly incredible, I can't wait to show this to my kids after school. Thank you so much for doing this work.

UberFly 4y ago
Agreed. My only comment is just how cool this is. Wow.

pencilguin 4y ago

The King's Chamber measures 10x20x10 cubits, as precisely as Egyptians could cut stone, providing us a very precise measure of the builders' cubit. By outstanding coincidence, the chamber is exactly 5pi/3 meters wide. (This also equals 2phi² meters.) The diagonal from corner to opposite corner is 10+sqrt(2) meters, to three places. The ancient Egyptians would have been awed by such coincidences. Us, not so much. I don't know of anyplace where ancient Egyptians demonstrated knowledge of phi, which has the wondrous properties that 1/phi+1=phi=phi²-1. They could of course measure pi as precisely as they liked just by tracing a big circle. Some people make a big deal about the perimeter of its base matching its height times 2pi, and about ratios of these dimensions to the sizes of the Earth, Moon, and Sun. Khafre's is a bit smaller, so its ratios would be off.

imagineerschool 4y ago

The 'mystery' chamber in the base of the Great Pyramid is a functioning pulse pump - this researcher measured it and built a scale replica: https://sentinelkennels.com/Research_Article_V41.html https://sentinelkennels.com/Research_Article_V41.html The mechanisms of the Great Pyramid can only be conjectured about in the present day because of the extensive damage to the structure, but it's pretty clear it served /some/ purpose.

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hfo 4y ago
> but it's pretty clear it served /some/ purpose. One would think the sarcophagus in the center would give away what that purpose could have been...

GNOMES 4y ago

Site seems based on selling these custom tours, is there a link to all of the existing (free) ones?

Balgair 4y ago

Wow! Just wow! I really hope to see it in person now! Quick question: Do you wear the Indiana Jones hat while scanning? Because I know I couldn't pass up that chance.

lukehollis 4y ago
I listen to the Pyramid Song by Radiohead on headphones :) couldn’t pass up either.

dwringer 4y ago

This is absolutely fantastic, the only thing I note with some sadness is that the well shaft leading down from the entrance tunnel of the Queen's Chamber is not mapped. The grated-off hole leading down into it is visible and the model does show a cavity there, but there is also a chamber (called the "Grotto" in old diagrams) partway down which is said to have been at the top of the limestone mound on which the pyramid is built. Was it not permitted to access this area?

hfo 4y ago
EDIT: I was wrong, it's all there. Amazing! Also missing: The horizontal passage, the queens chamber, the descending passage, the lower chamber and the passage to the relieving chambers of the kings chamber. They're all not accessible for tourists. The tour covers what you would see as a normal visitor (not ie an archeologist with special permission).
- dwringer 4y ago
  That's not entirely true - both the queen's chamber as well as the descending passage are indeed mapped (though the very upper part of the descending passage is blocked). There's a note when entering the descending passage: "This is normally blocked off to visitors, but we can visit in our tour!" If you didn't get to them by clicking through the photos, you can click the lower left "Dollhouse mode" icon to get a 3d viewer, in which these things are visible. They are both included on the "guided tour" mode, however, if you just load the page and click through the prompts in the middle. I was hoping that the OP might reply to provide more insight on what specific restrictions there might have been, considering some special permissions appear to have been granted. It presents as a bit of a mystery since the site claims "for the first time ever, explore the full interior" and makes no mention of any missing areas.

spencercwood 4y ago

Dang this is rad, thank you for sharing!

stvnbn 4y ago

This is awesome! It's like being there. I always wanted a tour. Thank you!

TheBigSalad 4y ago

This is amazing!

CobrastanJorji 4y ago

I'd love to hear about the process you went through to get something like this approved. I am very curious and slightly scared of the sort of red tape that is involved for a proposal that starts "I'd like to do something to the Great Pyramid," even if it's as innocuous as taking pictures. Or was it maybe a right place right time sort of thing where you were there with an existing scientific investigation and it was significantly simplified.

hfo 4y ago

For anyone interested in the great pyramid, here is a book recommendation (free), IMHO it surpasses even the gold standard "Maragioglio and Rinaldi" (M&R). Unfortunately on that horrible academia.edu site: https://www.academia.edu/72468121/The_Great_Pyramid_Part_1_A_Laymans_guide https://www.academia.edu/72468121/The_Great_Pyramid_Part_1_A... https://www.academia.edu/75544329/The_Great_Pyramid_Part_2_A_Laymans_guide https://www.academia.edu/75544329/The_Great_Pyramid_Part_2_A...

club_tropical 4y ago

This is exactly what is needed in archeology. High quality imaging & survey, not historical speculations tied up with this or that professor’s ego-driven “school of thought”.

iancmceachern 4y ago
Exactly, share the facts not interpretations
mattfrommars 4y ago
This is by far the best and most enjoyable experience I tend to have in VR. Meta Quesr is an incredible piece of device to experience this in. I can't wait to fire mine up and enjoy this ;)
- snailmailman 4y ago
  I just tried it in VR on my Quest 2, and while it was neat, it was only photospheres, and wasn't really 3D. very disorienting. Weird because there is clearly a 3d model, but in VR everything seems to be a fixed distance away. I think this is a matterport limitation?
  - lukehollis 4y ago
    Thanks for trying it and pointing this out--I haven't been working on the VR version for this reason. The web viewer provides movement through 360 photos instead of the 3d model.

Bellend 4y ago

I really really enjoyed this and the information. Thank you so much for putting the time in to make it. I doubt I will ever see the Pyramids but I always wanted to and this was the closest I will likely get. My mind is blown by the whole topic.

shmerl 4y ago

Moving with arrow keys is very cool!

1970-01-01 4y ago

Very cool! I suggest pairing with the Myst soundtrack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zboL71iRFBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zboL71iRFBE

deleted 4y ago

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mwidell 4y ago

Wow! After going through this tour, I feel like I don't need to visit in real life. I can imagine an "IRL" tour wouldn't be as good, with queues, lots of other tourists, etc. This was the best virtual visit experience I have ever had, to any real world place. Kudos!

sdbrady 4y ago
Having been inside earlier this year, you would be doing yourself a huge disservice not visiting this IRL. Yes, the visual fidelity of this is amazing, but there are a lot of intangibles missing (i.e., the sonic resonance).

matthewhartmans 4y ago

This is super well done! Going through the pyramid brought back so many amazing memories. Had such a great trip here and because of this, I got to experience it again. The website interactions are silky smooth and beautifully done and the image quality is just incredible! Thanks for putting this together!

alanwreath 4y ago

I wish looking straight up wasn't blurry, I know this is a common problem with 360 camera's but I'd hoped that a camera of this caliber would account for it (even if with a little stitching) EDIT: I didn't say it (it goes without saying), but this is awesome, especially as a work of preservation.

samplatt 4y ago
It's using a [Matterport camera](https://www.amazon.com.au/Matterport-Professional-Experiences-Architecture-Construction/dp/B08B2Q3S85 https://www.amazon.com.au/Matterport-Professional-Experience...) - they capture from 3 vertical directions (+45.deg, level, and -45.deg), and then rotates in a circle. Though the technical limitations are frustrating, the end result tends to be much higher quality than other, more manual software pipelines. Not to mention _significantly_ easier to process.

herdymerzbow 4y ago

Amazing stuff. Very immersive. Didn't think I would ever get to see inside the pyramids and while this isn't quite like being there in person, it does help scratch the itch. Your tour gives a much greater sense of their scale due to the length of the tunnels you have to navigate. Meanwhile I have seen them from the air while flying from Dubai to Europe. We flew over Cairo and I managed to spot them, which I was very pleased about and began my first step into unconventional ways of appreciating the pyramids.

qq66 4y ago

Is this available in VR?

lukehollis 4y ago
Yes, you should be able to open the link in a VR headset with the in-headset web browser and then fullscreen to move through the 360 images in the virtual tour Free Explore mode if you like it, but I've only been working on supporting the web experience on desktop/mobile.

jbverschoor 4y ago

Super cool. How difficult was it to scan? I’m tend off walking and post processing

lukehollis 4y ago
It was a challenging scan--but not very large. The toughest part was working around the tourists.

ridgeguy 4y ago

Thank you so much for your work! I loaded your tour of the Great Pyramid onto my laptop and settled into bed next to my wife, who is recovering from knee replacement surgery. I said "May I take you to Egypt for awhile?". She loved it! I really appreciate the effort you've put into giving access to historically important sites fir those of us who are unlikely to visit in person.

lukehollis 4y ago
I love this story, and thanks for visiting & sharing! I hope she makes a quick recovery. If it's interesting apart from the other scans I mentioned in the comments, one of the favorite places that I've worked is in the Sinai at St Catherine's Monastery: https://stcatherines.mused.org/en/ https://stcatherines.mused.org/en/ has three scans of the Holy Summit of Mt Sinai, Burning Bush/Monastery, and Monastery Museum.

_dark_matter_ 4y ago

Just amazing. I "walked" through with my kids (8 & 10 years old), and they couldn't get enough. They read every piece of text and wanted to go on to the next tour! We'll have to wait for another day. Thank you!

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soheilpro 4y ago

This is amazing. Thank you!

xzatious 4y ago

Really wonderful experience. I don't comment here much but this is really great. Bravo.

qersist3nce 4y ago

Thanks for the amazing work! Here are my notes: 1- Actual surveying of the site was a bit annoying. On one hand, I wanted to scan everything and look at every detail. On the other, I didn't know where I was and didn't want to miss out by my depth-first approach. The automatic surveying routine (clicking next) moves the camera way too fast. Also I guess it doesn't present everything we know of the site. For example I wanted to have a more clear look at the shafts. So A) provide a minimap for every detail we know of the site to make idealists of us, happy :) B) slow down the speed of auto-surveyor. I experienced these same technical problems while traversing the Perspolis site: https://persepolis.getty.edu/ https://persepolis.getty.edu/ 2- What's with the utility wiring in the King's chamber? Is it customary in archeological sites? I thought it should have been done more neatly. Also, do the "cosmic ray detectors" work by battery power in those wooden boxes? Is there a rule that scientific instruments should be in wooden boxes? 3- How do we know what the main purpose of the Great Pyramid was? Why were the chambers named as King or Queen's chamber when we didn't find any mummies or hieroglyphs inside? This question especially becomes important when we don't know what the purpose of those clear-cut shafts in chambers was. 4- As an archeologist, what do you think of the works of Erich von Daniken or the claims that ancient human technology couldn't have cut those clear cuts or moved those giant stones? 5- Before seeing this, I just woke up early from a nightmare. I rule out most of it due my brain mixing my personal experiences of the day and university. But, the strange part of that dream was that at the end of it, someone trapped someone else (like in a dome wire-frame cage that is used in catching birds) , and I heard a serious stern voice ordering him to "dig". Next up I woke up and saw this on HN, deciding to have a virtual visit of the internal chambers of the Great Pyramid. Phew! What a coincidence!

piceas 4y ago
On mobile, for the tour, I found the camera moved a bit quickly and would also cut corners. I think it would be helpful to break the movement down a bit and add intermediate positions. Rotate camera, move along in the direction that your head might realistically travel through the space, and then a final rotation at the destination if needed.

808 4y ago

A most excellent series of resources tied together in a thoughtfully refined fashion. Managed to get it working on an ancient 10yr old 'droid mobile with latest FF, likewise on a decade old tablet in latest Brave. Not sure if you have any intention of scanning the Hawara complex, but if you can gain access to the below discussed datasets, & if there were any chance of linking your modelling to these scans, it would make a mindblowing visit to the underworld! Scans of beneath Hawara are discussed by Dr Carmen Boulter & Klaus Dona here: https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=hw1RSYIgr3I https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=hw1RSYIgr3I As others have said, Muon scans have revealed hidden details in the Great Pyramid, but I have heard less chatter about these Hawara studies from 2014-15, regarding multiple long-distance water tunnels, possibly linking back to Giza & the water beneath the Great Pyramid. When linked to the historic water damage around the base of the sphynx, the water separation/hydrogen power station theories suggested by various physicists (& HN posters) seem less fantastical. A feeder into the Great Pyramid (the specific name escapes, but can be seen as a peaked entrance towards one side) from these waters would cascade down through the complex & onwards towards Hawara, possibly explaining why the water under Giza & in the inland lake at Hawara are saline, but neither chemically match Nile or Med' waters. Keep up the good work. ^_^

gaurav_k 4y ago

This does not work well on Brave browser - keeps reloading. Will definitely check it on my desktop though, looks super cool

botanical 4y ago

This is amazing! It reminds me of exploring with Encarta as a child. Only one minor annoyance is it uses imperial units. Also it would be nice to know the temperature at the subterranean chamber

Schinken_ 4y ago

Amazing work! Ever since I watched the documentary about the ScanPyramids Project I've been waiting for a full 3D Scan (moreso even for a VR Project, but that's only a small step from this). I figured they were probably not allowed to publish their scans, so this is a nice surprise. This looks a bit "segmented" to me? As in, the scanned parts are not necessarily 100% overlapping (and resulting in a single union model?). Nonetheless amazing work. If you're interested in VR compatibility, I believe A-Frame (https://aframe.io/ https://aframe.io/) (also threejs and webbased IIRC) might do the trick.

pabs3 4y ago

The Mused jobs link points at the blog, is that intentional?

lukehollis 4y ago
Thanks, I'll update this--I've been working with a few of my friends this year, and I think we're still looking for product-market fit so haven't been thinking of hiring recently. Maybe since 19th and 20th century archaeologists have a sometimes terrible track record (Elgin Marbles, Benin Bronzes, etc.), it's important to not be similarly extractive with the 3d data now but instead find ways to connect the local and international communities using the laser scans. That's one of the areas we're exploring next.
- pabs3 4y ago
  I noticed you have released some source code on GitLab, but it appears to be all rights reserved (no license information in the repo), but is also still viewable by the public, did you mean to make it a private project on GitLab instead?

djmips 4y ago

This is awesome. I desire a high res skybox at the entrance so I can take one look back out onto the Central Field before I delve inside. It would add to the experience! Great job though I love stuff like this.

lukehollis 4y ago
Great idea--I'll see if I can head back out to capture this along with more of the path to get to the Robber's Tunnel.

mnw21cam 4y ago

I'm getting a nice video flyby of the outside of the pyramid, and a spinny thing at the bottom that says loading, and has done since last night. Chromium 106.0.5249.119 on Debian, JS is switched on, webgl works correctly. Edit: I should also note that in the console I also get stats.g.doubleclick.net…AAI~&z=1802238861:1 Failed to load resource: net::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID

zengineer 4y ago

Wow, this is how a digital trip to a museum should be! Really well done and interesting - not giving too much information at the same time.

mikestaub 4y ago

Any plans to upload a highres photogrammetry model to be explored with webXR?

downboots 4y ago

Out of curiosity, if you were to extend the lines of the chamber tunnels would it reach an interesting place in the earth or sky? Could the angles carry meaning?

lukehollis 4y ago

In case anyone comes across this in the future, I finished the blog about the process here: https://blog.mused.org/building-a-guided-tour-of-the-great-pyramid-digitizing-khufu-pyramid-interior-with-harvards-giza-project/ https://blog.mused.org/building-a-guided-tour-of-the-great-p... Thanks to the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, especially Doctor Wael Fathy and Inspector Ezzat Salama at the Giza Plateau who worked on site with me this summer. And thanks again to everyone here for visiting and the feedback!