We have all walked around ruins and tried hard to picture what life for those who once lived in them. Now a team from Reading University has created a virtual reality experience including how it would have sounded and smelled 2,000 years ago.
Dr Ian Ewart’s virtual reality model of Roman Silchester, complete with authentic smells, was shown on BBCs South Today and can be viewed here:
http://mms.tveyes.com/PlaybackPortal.aspx?SavedEditID=12d6d33f-96c5-4f37-a0e9-9b2ede1571b2
“As well as being an educational tool this will have wider practical uses, such as helping us build a better hospital: you might think that one of the characteristics is the smell, and the sounds within it. When developing a building like that, if you can incorporate some of those senses into it, you will hopefully come up with a more realistic design.“