Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

A group of Japanese students has been meticulously working to recreate the sights and sounds of Hiroshima, during and after the atomic bombing carried out by Uthe US in 1945, through a 5 minute VR experience. Which will transport the users back in time to the moment when the city was razed down into a wasteland by the atomic bomb.

On August 6th, 1945, a B-29 Flight dropped an atomic bomb names ‘little boy’ on Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people.

Mei Okada, a student working on this project in a technical high school in Fukuyama, which is just 10 km from Hiroshima, told that even without knowing the language, one can understand seeing the images, which is one of the merits of using VR technology.

Yuhi Nakagawa, another student of the same school working on the same project said that while creating the buildings in Hiroshima before the blast, later seeing many photos of the buildings that were gone, he said that he really felt scary analyzing the effect of damage that can be caused by an atomic bomb.

Wearing the VR headsets, users can take a walk along the Motayasu river prior to the blast and witness the old buildings and businesses which once stood in Hiroshima before the blast occurred. Users can also enter the post office and the Shima hospital courtyard, where skeletal remains of a building also called Atomic bomb dome stands on the banks of the river.

The students studied old photographs, postcards and interviewed the survivors of the bombing, they also used computer graphics software to add more details such as lightning, natural wear, and tear on building surfaces, to enhance the user experience in order to recreate the Hiroshima Bombings.

Kazushi Hasegawa, the computer teacher supervising the project, told that many people who knew the city very well told him that it is done very well and felt nostalgic looking at the visuals. They also said that he’s glad to have created this as many recall their old memories from that time after experiencing this recreated visuals.

By making this project, the students and teachers hope that this VR experience makes everyone realize the horrors of an atomic bomb explosion, which hopefully will prevent anything similar occurring in the near future.

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