A walk through a combat zone

A team of journalists, programmers and 3D artists recreate the deadliest day of Ukraine's Maidan revolution as an immersive VR documentary called Aftermath VR: Euromaidan.

For Serhiy Merchuk, the morning of 20 February 2014 begins with a cup of tea in the field kitchen of the Order of Malta on the Kiev Maidan. A little later, breakfast is out of the question. The storm of security forces begins. The activists confront them on Institutska Street. Merchuk tries to climb an embankment with other men. In the next three hours, 50 people will die in a hail of bullets: 47 demonstrators, three policemen. "Branches fell down on us, that's how hard the shooting was," Merchuk recalls.

Merchuk is one of the protagonists of "Aftermath VR: Euromaidan", a virtual reality that documents the bloodiest day of the three-month Maidan protests. "It was an unprecedented tragedy," says project director Alexei Furman, who witnessed the turning point of the Maidan movement as a photojournalist. "You don't forget something like that. It stays with you for a lifetime."

An unpleasant journey through time

With the new VR application Aftermath VR:Euromaidan, a not-so-pleasant journey back in time is possible accordingly: users can follow the events when government troops opened fire on the demonstrators and 50 people were killed up close and in the middle in VR, as if they were on the spot.

Users retrace the same path as the protesters did when they fought back against the police. Using VR headsets, they can explore the street and access archival footage, 360° video interviews with eyewitnesses and scanned Euromaidan artefacts. The project was awarded a Journalism 360 Challenge Grant in 2017, but is now being completed online via crowdfunding to complete the final product.

"Aftermath VR: Euromaidan is a challenging project that combines sophisticated visual storytelling and innovative technology," say the organisers. "Most of the things we are working on in the project have never been achieved before, such as reconstructing a huge urban area with very detailed virtual reality."

Source: diepresse / calvertjournal