[syphilis2]

My idea from decades ago, which I'd love to see implemented, is to capture the height information of the painting and reconstruct it in the browser using physically based rendering. Let the viewer decide what environment to put the painting in, and be able to move around and inspect from every angle. That's the biggest thing that's missing when looking at paintings online: there's no depth and no setting. Some paintings literally shimmer from small dots of glossy paint, others are heavily built up, I want that recreated online.

[gxqoz]

It's not in a browser per se but this New Yorker article from a few years ago goes into how a company uses various high-tech scanners to create very convincing reproduction of paintings that include their depth: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/28/the-factory-of...