You now can virtually travel around the world without leaving your home. There are several sites offering web surfers the opportunity to become a virtual tourist. The latest one offers a tour of Beijing’s 178-acre Forbidden City, the exclusive home of China’s emperors for centuries. You can also watch the emperor feast at the dinner table, practice archery with the help of a courtesan, play a board game called Weiqi, train fighting crickets, and feed them mosquitoes. Maybe the last one is a little too real. Virtual tours can also be narrowed down by topic, including: symbolic animals, Imperial Garden, and dragons.

When a virtual tourist enters the Forbidden City, they are offered a choice of their own avatar character with 9 historical costumes for a sense of history and decorum. Running (and flying) isn’t allowed but you can interact with other virtual visitors.

The website development was created by IBM and is based on 3-D immersive gaming software. The project took 3 years and at a cost of $3 million. To fully view the journey, a user would require a 204MB download for Windows owners and Linux/Mac users are offered their own versions.

IBM offers additional “cultural heritage projects” such as the Vatican Library, Eternal Egypt, the Hermitage Museum, and the Pieta.