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PUC MG/2004 Inglês > Adjectives > Agreement
It's a sunny morning, perfect for a leisurely walk. The date: A.D. 400. You walk up the steps of the Temple of Vesta, where six virgins tend an eternal flame. Crossing the plaza through the columns of the law courts, you enter the Senate building to see the marble-lined walls. Back outside, you look at figures on the Arch of Septimus Severus, 10 meters overhead. Can't see the soldiers' faces paying obeisance to the emperor? Go ahead, levitate up for a closer look. Why not? It's a virtual world.
A funny thing happened to the Forum: it went digital. Thanks to a team of scholars, the world now has a 3-D interactive reconstruction of the heart of imperial Rome. Using PCs and modeling software, UCLA's Cultural Virtual Reality Lab re-created 22 temples, courts and monuments - perhaps the most complex historical VR re-creation ever attempted. The computer operator can take you anywhere you want to go in a simulated journey through the ancient cityscape, as in a kind of time machine.
Making each building historically accurate required serious detective work. The team used descriptions in ancient texts, modern scholarship and even images on Roman coins. The models not only aid in teaching but may also stimulate new scholarship. A lighting study of the building Julius Caesar ordered for the Senate shows that the interior was usually dim, even on the brightest day of the year. Did Caesar, who hated the senators, deliberately keep them in the dark?
The Forum may fill up with people again. Alan Kay, he computer guru who helped ioneer computer graphics at Xerox PARC and Apple, thinks "many things will come from this", and wants to turn the Forum into a tourist version of the popular fantasy game EverQuest. Soon online tourists may be visiting it, interacting with each other. See you in Rome.
You can't see the soldiers' faces because:
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