Virtual Salla World War II graveyard

A virtual reality environment that recreates the cemetery for German World War II soldiers near Salla, Finland. The real cemetery is in the border zone between Finland and Russia and requires a special permit to access. The VR environment was designed for an Oculus Rift CV1 head-mounted display. A handheld controller allows the user to "walk" or "teleport" between locations, and to light and place a virtual candle. To enhance the sense of presence, the virtual cemetery features volumetric clouds, variable lighting and spatial audio, which change according to the time of day and season; for example, in summer the lighting is brighter and the user can hear mosquitos buzzing around their head. The virtual cemetery also displays a visualisation of the number of fallen soldiers buried at the cemetery, represented as rows of ghostly figures standing at attention.

Jonna Häkkilä

Petri Hannula

Elina Luiro

Emilia Launne

Sanni Mustonen

Toni Westerlund

Ashley Colley

Häkkilä, J., Hannula, P., Luiro, E., Launne, E., Mustonen, S., Westerlund, T., & Colley, A. (2019). Visiting a virtual graveyard: Designing virtual reality cultural heritage experiences. Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1145/3365610.3368425