The Future of the Past? The impact of planetary-level "digital twins" on heritage engagement, learning and research

Introduction
The project reflects the potential of Microsoft's “digital twin” technology deployed in its flight simulation game (MSFS) to reconstruct heritage sites at scale, place them into a highly accurate representation of their landscape and then present them in an accessible form.
A digital twin is a "virtual replica of a physical object, person, or process that can be used to simulate its behaviour to better understand how it works in real life...linked to real data sources from the environment. Digital twins also comprise a layer of behavioural insights and visualizations derived from data." (Mckinsey 2024).

Research Questions
The project will address the following research questions
1. What is the scope for landscape level “digital twin” based technology, developed in a flight simulation context, to support:
- Engagement with heritage sites
- Learning about heritage sites
- Research into heritage sites
2. What are the outcomes in each use case and optimum conditions for achieving them?
3. What can those outcomes tell us about the ways in which understanding and perceptions of the past can be reframed by presenting heritage sites in an accurately reproduced landscape context?
4. How can the findings inform the deployment of the technology in other use cases?
It will use real-time creative & analytical practice, where development of digital twin heritage projects by my company Time Machine Designs (TMD) directly informs academic research into the applications and experience of the technology.
It will develop the ideas and opportunities set out in my article "Hadrian's Wall 180: Reconstructing the past with Microsoft Flight Simulator" for the “Virtual Realities as Time Travel” special edition of “Rethinking History” (forthcoming following the University of Bristol's New Directions in Classics, Gaming and Extended Reality conference (June 2024)).