Bernard Frischer wants to take people where and when they’ve never gone before — in the past, the present and the future.

A world-renowned virtual archaeologist and professor emeritus at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington, Frischer is the founder of Yorescape, a virtual tourism app produced through FlyoverZone, an education-tech company he founded in 2016.

Bernard Frischer holding a VR headset. Photo by Chris Kowalczyk, Indiana University

A video of Frischer and Yorescape, recently created through Google’s WeArePlay video series, generated 392,000 views in the first 12 days.

What does Yorescape do? It allows users to see ancient ruins as they are today and as the magnificent sites they once were, with guidance from one of the world’s leading experts.

Yorescape’s 3D digital technology allows visitors to explore ancient World Heritage Sites in Italy, Egypt, Greece, Mexico and Lebanon. According to Frischer, the company’s ultimate goal is to “cover the four corners of the Earth.”

“I always dreamed of time travel,” Frischer said. “Virtual reality is our temporary fix.”

The idea for Yorescape began three decades ago while Frischer taught a general education course on ancient Rome to a group of uninterested students at UCLA.

“I thought the way to get them interested, ideally, was to take them on a trip to Rome,” he said. “That wasn’t practical, so I thought ‘I’ll bring Rome to them and arouse their curiosity.’”

Imagine walking the streets of ancient Rome, experiencing the sights and sounds from 2,000 years ago. After 28 years of work and research, Frischer turned a dream into reality, beginning with a model of the entire ancient city within the Aurelian Walls, which encompasses 18 square kilometers of urban space that includes 7,000 buildings.

“There’s no other scientifically accurate model of ancient Rome like this,” Frischer said. “Nobody else has been crazy enough to try to do a project like this.”

Future projects include Pompeii’s House of the Tragic Poet, which dates from the second century BC and is known for its elaborate mosaic floors, frescoes and museum-quality paintings that depict scenes of Greek mythology. Discovered in 1824, the house hasn’t been open to the public for years.

“It’s a very beautiful house,” Frischer said. “Some of the paintings ended up in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. The plan of the house is almost the perfect Pompeiian house design; it has all the features you’d expect. It’s very symmetrically designed.”

Looking ahead, Frischer also wants to develop dynamic models that change over time as well as an educational game where students play as inhabitants of ancient worlds.

The impetus for Frischer’s vision began in the 1950s and ’60s as he grew up wanting to be an arts film director. He had a darkroom at home for photography. He also started a radio station at his high school in Beachwood, Ohio, and had visions of being a poet.

“I was a very nerdy, artistic kind of young man,” he said.

In 1974, Frischer visited a physical model of ancient Rome and wondered whether technology existed to provide a sense of walking down its ancient streets.

He began to use a computer to work on a model in 1980. From 2002 to 2004, he did a laser scan of the ancient Rome model through a $1 million Mellon Foundation grant, but the new model lacked detail, color, vegetation and people.

“I wanted the illusion of walking down these streets,” he said.

Frischer persisted until he was able to create his vision with software that architects use to design new buildings.

In 2013, Frischer came to IU to start a Ph.D. program in virtual heritage, a new field that uses the latest 3D technologies in disciplines such as anthropology, art, architectural history and conservation science.

“Arts and humanities are central to IU’s mission,” Frischer said. “At Luddy, we collaborate with people in the arts and sciences. That’s a healthy balance.”

Yorescape sells subscriptions to individuals and educational institutions to take virtual tours on any device — smartphones, laptops, PCs, tablets and VR headsets. An extra $20 provides access to virtual museums.

Universities with subscriptions include the University of Southern California, the University of California-Berkeley, Princeton and Vanderbilt.

While Yorescape was developed outside IU, Frischer said none of it would have been possible without the university’s intellectual capital.

“We couldn’t be the company we are without that synergy with the university,” he said.