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The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time is a partnership between the Palace Museum and IBM. The goal of the project is to provide the means for a world-wide audience to celebrate and explore aspects of Chinese culture and history. The Virtual Forbidden City is a 3-dimensional virtual world where visitors from around the world can experience the Forbidden City in Beijing. You can explore the magnificient palace as it was during the Qing dynasty, which ruled from 1644 until 1912, the end of the Imperial period in China.

I have not been able to visit other Chinese VR worlds such as Hipihi because of technical problems (I think their technology is not there yet), and The Forbidden City is the first Chinese VR world that I have seen. It is very easy to download and use, and after creating my account I have spent a couple of hours in the Palace Museum accompanied by a beautiful Chinese music. I have taken a tour with a bot, explored the interactive map and explored interactively on my own. There were many visitors, but most spoke Chinese only. I have never been to China, but now I have a quite vivid mental image of the Forbidden City (now the Palace Museum). There are many interactive 3D scenes of Chinese history and everyday life during the Qing dynasty. Last but not least, the 3D world is accompanied by a modern and well done community website with very active message boards.

See the FAQ for useful information on project goals and technologies used. The Forbidden City is very well done and demonstrates the power of VR technology for tourism, cultural applications, and history. The project started three years ago, which means that the technology platform was frozen before the availability of current leading edge VR technologies. I wonder what choices would be made if the project started today. Perhaps the hyper realism of Cry Engine 2, or perhaps the open source Open Sim platform derived from Second Life technology. IBM has recently committed significant resources to Open Sim, and the best examples of cultural and historic heritage recreations such as Assisi show that Second Life technology permits achieving the same and better quality in terms of visual rendering, physics and interactivity.

The project was launched on October 10. Virtual Worlds News: IBM and the Palace Museum announced the launch today of The Forbidden City: Beyond Space & Time, a virtual world based around China’s Forbidden City and looking at 600 years of its history and culture. It’s a downloadable application (Mac, Windows, and Linux).

The Forbidden City contains hundreds and hundreds of exquisite buildings and historic artifacts. Now, using virtual world technology, you can experience the awe inspired by this vast and amazing space. And rather than experiencing its wonders in isolation, the Virtual Forbidden City allows you to see and interact with other users and a range of helpful automated characters. As you explore the Virtual Forbidden City, you can choose to simply observe the buzz of activity, or you can take tours and participate in activities that provide insights into important aspects of Qing culture. While it provides an immersive and compelling experience in its own right, the Virtual Forbidden City also provides an unequalled way to plan a visit to the Palace Museum in Beijing, as the Forbidden City is now known.

The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time is the world’s first online virtual world dedicated to a country’s cultural heritage. This is presented as a three-dimensional replica of the square-kilometer palace grounds called The Virtual Forbidden City. The project partners’ goal was to create an experience that is as authentic as possible by being true to important Chinese principles of balance and harmony. Rather than being an isolating virtual experience, the Virtual Forbidden City allows visitors to see and interact with each other and with a wide range of volunteers, staff, and automated characters.