Want to know how long it took to travel in the Roman world?

[hongi]

http://orbis.stanford.edu/

Quite frankly, brilliant.

[Spoonist]

I really like how they source it

[Ziggy Stardust]

Really cool stuff. I am curious to look into more detail at the way they weight certain factors.

[Thanas]

It is pretty good and well sourced, not sure how much help it will be in field work though. On its own though, I can heartily recommend it.

[ray245]

It is pretty good and well sourced, not sure how much help it will be in field work though. On its own though, I can heartily recommend it.

It would certainly be useful for people making RTS games and mods.

[Thanas]

Sure, but neither RTS nor mods are professional historian work.

[Irbis]

Sure, but neither RTS nor mods are professional historian work.

*shrug* Is there reason why they can't use genuine historian work? Maybe I look at it wrong, but some Total War mods, especially Rome and Empire used huge amount of research and amazingly detailed work by fans.

[Thanas]

Yes, they did and I love some of them to death (IFBD, RTR etc. may be my favorite RTS ever). Modding however is not something a professional historian would do for a living, which was my point.

And now I sound like I hate the orbis project, when in fact I think it is a great effort.

[Ziggy Stardust]

The only use I can see it having for any "legitimate" historical research is in some theoretical case where person/group/legion/whatever was in place A on some date and place B on another date, but the records of the A->B travel are missing, then I could see using this to be helpful in coming up with some alternative models for the trip as a precursor to field or in-depth archival research or something.

But maybe this is a stretch.

[Thanas]

^Yeah.

Or to quickly make graphics illustrating the possible routes from Point A > B. It is really good for that -a great achievement in itself.

[ray245]

^Yeah.

Or to quickly make graphics illustrating the possible routes from Point A > B. It is really good for that -a great achievement in itself.

That would be a great teaching tool though. It would certainly help new students understand the scale of the Ancient world and how much effort it takes for any army to march from place to place.