The British Library, videogame festival GameCity and software company Crytek, recently launched the “Off The Map” competition, where participants would have to turn historic maps and engravings into a 3D environment using Crytek's CRYENGINE software.

Contestants could elect to depict Stonehenge, the Pyramids at Giza, or the Tower of London.

Six second-year students from De Montfort University in Leicester went one better - instead of just the Tower of London before 1666, they rendered shops and stalls, sooty back alleys and wharves, gallows and church cemeteries, London Bridge and Pudding Lane, where the fire originated. Even the sunlight has an aspect of historical grime to it. 

The group “even included the hanging signs of genuine inns and businesses,” based on mentions found in diaries of the day.



H/T The Daily Dot