Mogao Grottoes goes high-tech

Zhao Shengliang, director of the Dunhuang Academy, said it has been working with Huawei since March 2019. Using Huawei's Hetu technology to display Dunhuang art allows visitors to see detailed mural content outside the cave using Huawei mobile phones.

The presentation means that time spent by visitors inside the caves can be reduced, which allows for better protection of the relics, Zhao said. In addition, the amount of information available to visitors is increased, a better balance between protection and open utilization can be achieved and new ways of promoting Dunhuang art can be explored.

Since the early 1990s, the Dunhuang Academy has used digital technology to preserve detailed data about the grottoes. After nearly 30 years, it has amassed a wealth of resources and has achieved global sharing. It has played an important role in the protection and research of the grottoes and the progress of various works.

This time, Huawei's Hetu platform fused the Dunhuang study findings and high-precision mural images of Digital Dunhuang with the virtual content of three-dimensional grotto models.