Name: Philipp Grieß/ Frank Govaere / Oliver Schreer
Role: Director / Producer / Volumetric Video Production
Institution/company: UFA GmbH / UFA GmbH / Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institut
About
The last survivors who experienced the atrocities of National Socialism first hand are already old. The joint virtual reality project by UFA and Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institute (HHI) is committed to preserving these voices. With the technology of the volumetric video, whose basic technology “3D Human Body Reconstruction” was developed by researchers at Fraunhofer HHI, the memories of the Holocaust survivors are recorded for future generations. In the volumetric studio of Volucap GmbH, the Jewish eyewitness Ernst Grube reports on the experiences in National Socialist Germany and the persecution. Ernst Grube was captured in the volumetric studio with the help of 32 cameras. A lifelike three-dimensional image of Ernst Grube is then calculated from the video information using computer vision methods and can be directly integrated into a virtual world. This “walk-in film” illustrates a contemporary document in an unprecedented way. The aim is to convey the topic as a virtual reality (VR) experience, especially to younger generations, to whom the events of National Socialism seem far away. The “Contemporary Witnesses” project sets a new milestone in the documentation of a central chapter of German history and thus makes a valuable contribution to the German and European culture of remembrance. The full VR Experience was completed in March 2022 by the VR production company INVR-SPACE GmbH. It comprises five episodes: 1) The apartment of the Grube family in Munich, 2) The Jewish children’s home Antonienheim in Munich, 3) In the Munich Jewish ghetto – the Milbertshofen camp, 4) The fear of deportation, 5) The Theresienstadt concentration camp. Each of the episodes has a duration of 8-10 minutes and the user can decide, which episode would like to be experienced with the eyewitness. Overall, the VR Experience has a total duration of about 50 minutes. Hence, this project is to the best of our knowledge the longest VR production using volumetric video technology worldwide and for the first time. In the context of preserving contemporary evidence, this VR experience is also unique.
Technical Description
Technologies utilized in the experience: Volumetric Recording, VR (6DOF)
Hardware required to experience the project: PCVR Headset
Operating system: Windows
Language(s) used or supported in your experience: English, German
Is your experience a single-user or multi-user: Single-user
Project Details
Creators of this project: University or Research Project
Date of completion: 03/01/2022
Acceptable conditions: The VR production “Ernst Grube – the Legacy” is provided free of charge and for educational use only. Further distribution is not allowed. The user has to sign an agreement of use before receiving the download link.
Licence Model: CC BY
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