Experience everyday Helsinki in room-scale virtual reality, then watch it transform into a devastated urban landscape like Syria's Aleppo. This simulation shifts familiar surroundings into scenes from news footage, highlighting VR's role in journalism and personal storytelling. Developed as a 2017 pilot with Yle, the Finnish Broadcasting Company, it launches the Perspectives series of immersive journalism pieces.
Users navigate these contrasting environments to grasp shifting realities firsthand. The narrative VR experience suits those interested in innovative reporting and empathetic viewpoints through technology. PC players engage with this focused exploration of virtual perspectives.
What would it feel like if Helsinki was the city of Aleppo and you were there? What kind of possibilities does virtual reality offer to journalism?
Aleppo-Helsinki was a pilot project developed together with Yle (Finnish Broadcasting Company) around the possibilities that room scale virtual reality offers for journalism, storytelling and personal experience in the beginning of 2017. In the virtual experience the audience is taken first to a familiar scenery in a normal day Helsinki. After a while the Helsinki scenery changes, now resembling more like the news images of a bombed down and deserted city of Aleppo in Syria.
Aleppo-Helsinki is the first experience in our Perspectives series of immersive journalism experiences.
NOTE: This is not a game. This is a narrative VR experience.
