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World of Tanks developer reenacts a 1941 battle for 360-degree video and virtual reality

Wargaming hired 40 war reenactors to act as infantry.

Image Credit: Wargaming

Wargaming wants to put you into a battle.

The company released a special video today called “1941 Battle: 360-degree Reenactment” that enables viewers to get an immersive look at what a World War II tank fight looked like. Wargaming worked with Google to record and accurately portray the fight, and you can watch it all in a video on YouTube. If you do, you can use your arrow keys or your mouse to look around and see different angles of the battles. If you want even more immersion, you can boot up the video on the YouTube app for the Google Cardboard VR holster for your smartphone to make it feel like you’re truly standing in the middle of the mayhem.

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Check it out for yourself:

To bring the battle to life, Wargaming took to a field with a platoon of war reenactors as well as the T-34 and Panzer III tanks. The publisher even had artillery guns and planes flying over head. Then Google set up its 360-degree recording equipment, which is similar to the Google Jump technology it introduced earlier this year for enabling consumers to produce their own 360-degree VR videos.

This is more evidence at just how much money Wargaming has to market its free-to-play PC shooter. World of Tanks is a highly lucrative game that has caught on with gamers around the world — and especially in emerging markets like Russia and Brazil. While it doesn’t generate the same level of revenues as something like League of Legends (what does?), it’s in that second tier of globally popular PC games. It made approximately $400 million in 2014, according to the SuperData research firm. That was enough to put it in the top-five PC releases in terms of cash made from in-app purchases.