Hadrian’s Wall 180: Flying Back to Roman Britain

Hadrian’s Wall 180 is a new digital reconstruction project for Microsoft Flight Simulator. It has created an aerial tour of Hadrian’s Wall as it may have looked around 180 AD.

Conceived as the first in a new category of heritage-based scenery for the flight sim community, the project grew into something bigger. It became an early look at how Microsoft’s digital twin and simulator technology could reshape heritage storytelling in gaming.

That shift happened through conversation with heritage sites along Hadrian’s Wall, with the project’s designers and with the flight sim community itself. Those discussions led to a new idea: short films built from the in-game footage, designed to engage visitors on-site. The result is a collaboration between Time Machine Designs (TMD), Boomsatsuma and the Hadrian’s Wall Partnership.

The films

The four short Hadrian’s Wall 180 films take viewers flying along the Wall as it would have appeared in c. 180 AD, covering the eastern, western, and central sections, plus a general introduction. The scripts were written collaboratively with museum and site staff at each location. Semi-retired Northumbrian farmer David Nixon was asked to provide the voiceovers.

The challenge

A digital recreation may seem like an obvious way to bring Hadrian’s Wall to life, but it’s a genuinely difficult one. The Wall isn’t just an 80-mile stone-and-timber line, it’s a full frontier system. This includes forts, milecastles, turrets, a northern ditch, the vallum , roads and settlements outside the fort walls. These are layered over pre- and post-Roman structures and a landscape crossed by rivers running coast to coast.

Much of that landscape is now built over, including by the modern cities of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Carlisle. This raises real questions about how to portray the ancient terrain authentically and sensitively. Add to that the parts of the Wall’s original architecture that remain genuinely unknown and still debated by academics, and turning it into a viable aerial tour became a serious interpretive challenge.

The Hadrian’s Wall 180 project

Hadrian’s Wall 180 is led by Richard Blows of Time Machine Designs (TMD). He worked in partnership with Boomsatsuma Education, a specialist in creative industries qualifications at UK Further and Higher Education level. That partnership allowed TMD to build a team of postgraduate and undergraduate Game Art students. They worked as freelancers in a real development-studio environment to deliver the reconstruction.

The scope is substantial, but TMD and Boomsatsuma took it on. They’ve rebuilt and returned to the landscape 73 modern miles of Wall; more than 150 miles of earthworks; 78 milecastles; 158 turrets; 18 forts and their surrounding settlements; four bridges; and the Roman town at Corbridge.

Thank you

Our thanks go to everyone who helped bring the Hadrian’s Wall 180 project to life:

• Richard Blows and the team at Time Machine Designs
• Boomsatsuma Education and the postgraduate and undergraduate Game Art students who delivered the reconstruction
• The museum and site staff across Hadrian’s Wall who collaborated on the scripts
• All of our partners at the Hadrian’s Wall Partnership
• Narrator and semi-retired farmer David Nixon who runs On The Move Theatre
  
  This project exists because of their generosity, expertise and support.