Show HN: A guided 3D Leonardo da Vinci museum, built in code

I think I’m a little churlish about this whole “skeuomorphic museum exhibition” angle. I’ve worked in and with museum technology for 30 years, and run two businesses working with hundreds of cultural heritage / museum clients.

Although this is technically impressive, I’m just not entirely sure why. Like - I just don’t want to dwell here…

The whole idea that you have to be in some kind of virtual 3D space just seems a little bit 1998 for me. When I worked at the Science Museum in the early 2000’s for example we were thinking about VRML and I was out on gallery shooting 3D pans and knitting them together for the web. Back then it did feel like there was a “if you can’t visit, here’s the next best thing” and that this should be “a virtual reality space online”.

But I think we’ve moved on. Museums have been making online exhibitions that are much more than just “a recreation of the real space online” for 20+ years - many of them are now really good at this. Take a look at someone like the Wellcome Collection [0] stories for example. They’re using the medium really well, they’re writing brilliantly, they’re knitting together fascinating relationships between items. The editorial is brilliant. The insights are brilliant. The linkages are brilliant. And as a consequence of all this, you end up wanting to stay.

Not to knock the OP, it’s nice - I like it, it’s slick, it’s well done, and anyone who gets anything out the door deserves a pat on the back - but I’m not sure it works as an engaging mechanism. Not for me, anyway.

[0] https://wellcomecollection.org/stories

Exactly this, it’s something that keeps being thrown around for new project ideas in cultural heritage for decades. And there is a metric ton of prior art. But there is no clear value proposition, and if for some reason someone pushes it through it sits unused for a few months or years and gets sunset after someone forgets it exists.

Great tech demo. These projects need demand and drive from the public, and there isn’t any. It’s also missing the deeper motivations of why people visit museums and cultural institutions.

I could see this being true for paintings, and especially if your primary interest is the meta.

For anything experiential, a virtual environment makes a kind of sense to me. Is it stained glass or sculpture or armor or a painting? How big is it? Does perspective or lighting matter at all? Do I care if the artist died of dysentery? Is the place the art?

Depending on those, I think I can understand. Otherwise, sure, a picture or panning widget and some wiki text is fine.

But also I’m just some goof on the internet and not an expert on anything.

Thank you for the Wellcome link and the feedback. I guess our target group is a different one, people who do not like to read long essays and therefore we tried to keep it short. So each stop has only a few plain sentences. And a bit more in the extended view. But sure, you are right that good writing is what makes people stay. That´s a point we still have to improve. Also for the walk we had the idea to bring everything together, his paintings, machines, notebooks and anatomy drawings, in one place you can walk through.

I’d say per earlier commenter - talk to audiences. A lot. Find out what they actually want, what they actually do, and what engages them. You may find you get a sweet spot with a virtual space + words that works even better than just one or the other!

So true, thank you. We will do that.

On a small screen surrounded by the rest of the user's lived experience how does the visual of simulated exhibition contribute? I get the architectural storytelling angle in built space, but on a computer or phone screen it's difficult, for me, to see the contribution. The building is required in the real world, not on my screen. Curious how you justify the elaborate modeling and delivery of the simulated building. A good HTML exhibit of the same content would be more easily accessed and learnable.

I think it has its place. Ironically I just literally tasked Opus 5.5 with modeling the entire 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition so I can walk around it.

There is something about experiencing scale in context. For sculptures this can be important and for other large scale art as well.

One voice out of billions.

Sales lesson: find those who like your product, ignore the rest.

I am on the pro digital twin page. Definitely.

1998 is a qualifier for what exactly? I didn’t get it since by your own account you admitted that the app is impressive.

Why do you take pictures? Why do we like sketches and diagrams? Information visualization is supporting our specie’s propensity for everything that is concrete. Imagination and image are related for a reason.

“Picture this!” Is another paraphrase.

I want to relive or augment my visits as well as get to know certain venues and the fact that it is rather easy now to build such copies even with frequent updates makes me frolicking.

The setup misses everything that you could do to let me experience his work in a setting reflecting his time.

An Italian Renaissance palazzo, the house of a nobleman of that time, maybe Leonardo's re-imagined studio etc.

Instead I see a museum that one of my architect friends might get excited (or offended) about but which completely removes all context from the works that the format you choose would otherwise naturally enable.

On that note: getting the colors of the paintings right is also tricky.

When you source these paintings you need to feed their color to a linearization process (as they likely will be in some non-linear color space like sRGB) before applying any scene lighting. And then finally do the display transform. Otherwise horrible things will happen (do happen in your current setup) to the colors and Leonardo will turn once in his grave every time someone opens the website. ;)

Thank you for the feedback. The later stops are his last house in Amboise which we rebuilt. For the earlier stops we decided on a building to serve the walk as well as possible. On colors: we decoded the images from sRGB, but the color filter over the scene and the video change them a bit on the wall. We will look into it. The close view shows them unchanged.

I don't understand why I can't just walk around the museum and discover things for myself.

I can't even navigate to the devices and inventions section with a single click on the listing page. The 3D scene is really well done, it would be nice if you just let people walk around freely instead of animating the camera.

And I also think you shouldn't automatically display the image in 2D, breaks my immersion immediately.

Thanks for the feedback. The walk is guided on purpose and pre-rendered as a film. Therefore everyone gets the same detail, also on an older phone, and people who are not so technical can’t get lost. Half of our visitors came on a phone. You can jump straight to the machines from the Plan in the Instruments panel, but it is a bit hidden, we will fix that. The flat view is on purpose too, there you see each work sharp and in its true colours.

I went through the first few images. It is really good to see scale placed over the painting.

I don’t like that I cannot move around by myself. Move to another piece is too slow… also entering museum (at first it is nice gimmick, the second entry is annoying as museum doesn’t remember my position; or I haven’t figured it out :)

Cheers.

Thanks. Yes, it is not possible to move around freely, that was a compromise we made to keep it accessible for older devices and older people. If you click the arrow it moves faster by the way. In the settings there is also a speed setting. Actually the address keeps your stop and a reload should bring you back to where you were.

The UI design might need some work.

It starts with no controls, just a picture. I hit esc. Things start moving. It keeps moving, I keep hitting esc, it doesn't stop. I try ctrl-c , no dice. I look around the frame for buttons. I try one of the buttons, it moves faster. I hold down esc. It doesn't respond to holding down esc either . I see no way to gain control. At no point do I gain control.

Ultimately it stops. Fine. Ok, no response to WASD. No response to drag motion. I click "Instruments" , I get a side-bar "instruments of the museum" with no contents. I click in the side bar. Now I can't close it, and other controls are gone. I try hitting esc. Multiple random clicks later i'm back where I started.

I try the "more" button", I am now looking at a painting sideways, and an anodyne text which explains very little. I click on a painting. Things start moving. I hit Esc. Suddenly the painting is full screen. GREAT. Ok, and now how do I get out? Esc? Oh esc. Ok NOW ESC... oh no, things are moving again. I didn't mean for things to move. Esc shouldn't cause things to START moving. hit esc again. The esc is ignored.

I end up at another painting. I try some buttons. Most don't work. I hit esc again. Things start moving. I didn't mean to move away from the painting, I just had it in front of me!

I am very confused.

I'm not in control here.

edit: "Esc shouldn't cause things to START moving"

Thank you for the detailed feedback. You are right, there should be a way to stop the walk while it moves. We will add that. ESC to close is however intended. The Instruments panel closes with the button at its bottom, but more intuitive would be at the top and we will move it there. The walk is guided on purpose, so WASD and dragging don’t work, but we should say that.

For the record I did not have any of the issues of the above person. I did try to click off the initial image but when I couldn't, I saw the big yellow button which I pressed and realized it was on rails and everything went smoothly from there.

Nice; The more ways of bringing great art to the masses, the better.

> Which digital museum would you like to see next?

M. C. Escher; It would be great to experience his mind-bending mathematical art - https://mcescher.com/

PS: For fans of Leonardo Da Vinci, Taschen's Leonardo: The Complete Paintings and Drawings by Frank Zollner is a must-have. This is a massive book (almost 7kgs and bigger than a briefcase) that contains beautiful reproductions of all his art - https://www.taschen.com/en/books/art/48100/leonardo-the-comp...

There is plenty of space for improvement like others have said here and i think it just needs a bit more time.

llms are great at languages but you dont just ask it to "translate from english to other supported languagues" it generates things that are hard to understand. when we talk about translation in real world we're actually talking about is a fundamental re-intepretation(transcreation) of the source text through target language's local, native mindset, and you should do the same with llms.

Great vision and creativity, and the execution is already at a high level.

There's just one issue: browsing and switching between different products is a bit choppy. This might be due to a low frame rate, so I recommend looking into that for some optimization.

This is very impressive! How did you manage such level of detail on the paintings? Is there a public library we could access if we want to make something open source and free? Btw, it would be great to see a museum of Paul Gauguin next!

Thank you! The paintings are public domain photos, mostly from Wikimedia Commons, hung at their real size. Our code is open source too: github.com/chipmates/museumofages. Gauguin is a nice idea, noted.

Unbelievable. period. I've never seen or even thought that there would be a museum full of da vinci's art work. Absolutely stunning thing you've built[brutally honest]

c.f.,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Leicester

which really needs to escape off the platter and be more accessible.

Agreed. It is one of the notebooks we could not put on our reading table. We found no copy online that is free to use, so the museum lists it as missing.

I love it! Would be great to double down on the experience, I'd add immersive experiences: audio / visuals to guide the discovery / interactiveness

Amazing. I'd wish more museums like this would exist so you can visit them from the comfort of your home.

Nice idea! The German translation is quite broken, though (not understandable).

Thanks! Which part was hard to read, the walk or the website? We would like to fix it.

Opened a GH issue. As an addendum maybe add a free form issue for things where the reporter is unsure what category fits best.

How did you get this idea? This is so cool

Thank you! Many people can't travel to a museum, because of illness, money or distance. The core idea is to bring the museum to them. Sure, we still have a lot to learn, but we will improve along the way.

Making it like VR in the future?

Not for now. Our focus is that the walk works for everyone and that we improve it as well as possible.

> We rebuild what was. You walk through it.

Closing the page right there.

Obviously AI was used to write some of this, but certainly not all of it.

Wonderful, well done

I love it. Well done

Thank you. We are happy you like it.

its good,