Wednesday, 20 August 2025

The Immersive Tour of Ancient Egypt: Horizon of Khufu

Immersive tours have become a reality and I guess it's the most likely way I am ever going to stand at the top of the great pyramid of Cairo. Somewhat by chance, I ended up taking this immersive tour of Ancient Egypt while visiting Xi'an, the Chinese city famous for its Terracotta Warriors. Yes I was in an ancient Chinese capital but I was not about to go and see real history, it was the fake sort I was looking for and boy did I get it. 


The tour is a family friendly virtual tour that takes place within a huge warehouse. To drag people in they do have to construct some cat statues and Egyptian style decorations. I guess the kid would be climbing up it and sliding down its back without the barrier in place. Kids don't really need virtual tours: they can find fun in the here and now.


You receive a headset that is clamped on and it does not admit any light from the outside. You are now seeing only what the headset shows you. It is disorienting at first, you cannot fully trust it and imagine you are going to bump into someone or something but with a little time you get used to it. You have to walk through actual space to make the image you are looking at appear as if you are walking through the temple or whichever exotic location it is serving you up with.


I was on a small boat gliding along the Nile and I seem to remember a cat and a tour guide accompanying me too. You don't have to look at them all the time but they are present. There is sound too, flutes and water, the tour guide talking... in Chinese. The sound also seemed to be  stereo so that when you turned your head it's position in the stereo mix changed - this made it seem as if the sound was outside of you and in the space. Nice touch. The visual aspect of the tour was quite complete yet at the same time also somewhat kitsch. It looked like a video game that started out with a big image but which then needed to continually top the last scene and so descended into special effects which broke the spell completely. To get a better sense of the imagery I'd suggest looking at their demo video on their website https://www.excurio.com/en/horizon-of-khufu/ 


This is what the scene looks like in the cold light of day. A group with their headsets on shuffling their way through the black and white empty space. Interestingly, I noticed there is a walking route which the virtual tour follows. Part 1 moves to one area and the group is then navigated to the next scene in another part of the space. This is a touring virtual tour (it can be presented in different cities) so I would imagine the host venue has to be large enough to accommodate this choreography.


When I pulled off my headset to compare the pyramids with the real space I saw before me a mass of geometric patters, black, white and grey. At first I thought these were just street art but having seen how the technology plots the space I now start to wonder if these play a functional role in spatial plotting. It is a distinct design one way or another. I was at this point in the tour more interested in the mechanics because the content had sort of exhausted itself and the form was no longer a novelty.   


What's more, the technology froze at one point and I got a tap on the shoulder from the staff who had to reset the program. The tour sort of works but the tech is not quite seamless yet. This was the most interesting aspect of it, it be honest, as the content was like a run of the mill video game. This is clearly an expensive and cutting edge touristic experience and they need to make their money back. That's why it cannot be too artistic or obscure. These immersive tours will only become more widespread and the technical aspects will surely improve but the concepts, narratives and interactivity all end up being put somewhat aside. If these are to really make a breakthrough they will need to better integrate these issues or else they will remain a novelty item like 3D cinema.

No comments:

Post a Comment