This app takes you on a virtual visit to the Pantheon, ancient Rome’s best-preserved building. Your guides are the distinguished art historians, Steven Zucker and Beth Harris of Smarthistory.

From the product description

About the Experience

Rome Reborn is a series of applications produced by the company Flyover Zone. They produce historic tours related to Rome, Egypt, and several other places. A few of them were made available as VR apps on Steam in the past. They offer historically accurate recreations of historic buildings, but don’t expect much immersion.

Graphics and Sound

As a 2019 title, it’s not completely fair to compare graphics to modern VR titles. That said though, the amazing Nefertari: Journey to Eternity was released a year before with stunning photogrammetric imagery. It was definitely possible. It’s clear they weren’t really going for photorealistic. The textures look much more at home in a 1990’s “multimedia CD-ROM” title than something modern. The textures are simple repeating images, the lighting is flat, and there are no shadows, reflections, or other details.

Information Content

The point of this title is to convey the appearance and scale of the original structures. This is a great goal and they are considered historically accurate. To augment the imagery, there is also narration by folks from a company called Smarthistory. The narration is fine, although it’s fairly minimal.

Navigation and Interactivity

Rome Reborn divides the area into interior and exterior. Each area has its own map that you can hold up with blue circles. Each blue circle is a viewpoint with its own narration. You can also walk or teleport around freely. There’s no turning other than physically turning your head which could be an issue for some people. There are no interactive elements, although there are clusters of people milling about enjoying the scene with you.

Updates and Support

n/a

Summary

This review is a bit pointless as the title is no longer available as of this year. Flyover Zone Productions is now completely focusing on their Yorescape virtual tourism app and site which no longer supports VR. If you are really interested in feeling the scale of the Roman Pantheon and have a way to try this title, you might like it, but it was never a masterpiece of immersion.