Nobody alive today knows with any certainty how the Egyptians built the Great Pyramid. Many theorie's have been elaborated, but none of them stood up to analysis.

It was exactly this unresolved riddle that led several teams at Dassault Systèmes, the world leader in real-time 3D technology, to provide backing for an architect and author of a revolutionary theory about the Great Pyramid, Jean-Pierre Houdin.

History has often shown us that scientific theories stem initially from intuition. Jean-Pierre Houdin’s hunch changed the course of his life. For the last eight years, he has devoted himself to developing the first scientific theory capable of fully explaining the construction of the Pyramid of Khufu.

Won over by Jean-Pierre Houdin’s passion and stimulated by the challenge, Dassault Systèmes have for the past two years been using advanced scientific 3D tools to examine every detail of his theory.

Jean-Pierre, with the support of Dassault Systèmes' solutions and teams, virtually rebuilt the pyramid using CATIA and simulated the building steps with SIMULIA and DELMIA. Thus the theory was refined and confirmed, entirely in a virtual environment.

The next step was to share this achievement. Dassault Systèmes therefore decided to use Virtools technology to offer a Real-time 3D experience both on the web and at la Geode, the greatest digital dome in Europe.

Dassault Systèmes and Geode have joined forces to create the largest real time 3D virtual reality installation in the world. Implementing Dassault Systèmes Virtools solutions, seven computers linked to a network are harnessed to reconstitute the Khufu site in 3 dimensions exactly as it was 4,500 years ago and to allow free movement inside the pyramid in response to questions asked by the public. Moreover, the same content is available on DS website so that everyone can interactively visit the site at his convenience.

From beginning to end, this outstanding project not only shows the power of both scientific and emotional 3D, but is also a tribute to Passion : Jean-Pierre's passion and our teams' passion for one of the most impressive mankind achievement.
 

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