ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World

'Conventional maps that represent this world as it appears from space signally fail to capture the severe environmental constraints that governed the flows of people, goods and information. Cost, rather than distance, is the principal determinant of connectivity.

For the first time, ORBIS allows us to express Roman communication costs in terms of both time and expense. By simulating movement along the principal routes of the Roman road network, the main navigable rivers, and hundreds of sea routes in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and coastal Atlantic, this interactive model reconstructs the duration and financial cost of travel in antiquity.'

I like how I posted this earlier, but the repost with the messed up URL gets the votes ;)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8001507

Most interesting. I picked up The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in a used bookstore recently and this seems like it will be a useful study aid.

Too bad, it doesn't seem to work in Safari. I find what I see incomprehensible and unusable. Some shapes seem to be drawn much too large.

In Chrome, it looks better.

This would make the core of an interesting game.

> ORBIS is designed for modern browsers and uses technology that works best in Chrome or Safari.

This is on latest Firefox. Really? The only truly open browser is not "modern"?