The Oulu-based technology company MeKiwi has created a completely immersive VR experience set during the Finnish Winter War called “Operaatio Suentassu”. It was developed using the Varjo XR-3 and HTC Vive Tracker, while the controller is a real deactivated Finland KP/-31 submachine gun. With this experience, the user can relive historical events and feel physically there. This type of technology can be applied, for example, to teaching or creating various experiences.
This kind of technology can be used for any kind of educational purposes, for example teaching CPR skills or working with specialised machinery. One can simulate any physical object and create an immersive, interactable situation in Virtual Reality and Extended Reality. Any kind of museums, science centers, educational institutes and specialised workplaces in general can take advantage of this tech.
“On the software side we already had the Talvisota experience but I wanted to include more action – so we added tanks, artillery, airplanes and waves of incoming soldiers” says Jaakko Asikainen, MeKiwi’s Chief Technology Officer.
”It all started small. A new war museum was starting in Mikkeli and we were offering our services for a war VR experience. The intention was to create a realistic, short segment teaching about the horrors of war from the point of view of a single soldier. But why create a generic VR experience with the normal controllers when we could be using actual physical guns as controllers? So we took up the challenge and started creating a replica of the machine gun Maxim M/09-21 used in the Winter War, which was a variation of the famous Maxim machine gun. Operation Suentassu was a direct continuation of the Maxim project, but this time we used an authentic deactivated weapon” says Jaakko Asikainen.
About MeKiwi
MeKiwi is a full-stack digital agency founded in 2014 in Oulu. MeKiwi offers customized digital applications, marketing consulting, AR/VR/XR solutions and a wide range of services to meet all your technology needs. “Our company is multicultural and diverse in its skills, which allows our creativity to flow from very different perspectives, helping us to better understand the customer’s vision and provide the best possible solution.”
Contact person for more information:
Begüm Doğan
Marketing Lead
Mekiwi.org