VR attraction for A’DAM lookout

Challenge
A'DAM Tower (A'DAM Toren) is a 21-storey building that will host the largest VR Game Park in Amsterdam.
We needed to make a VR attraction, that would allow visitors to ride through the most famous places in Amsterdam on a roller coaster in just 3.5 minutes with lots of special effects.

How we built Amsterdam
For this ride, we needed a detailed and realistic 3D model of 20 km² of the central part of Amsterdam. It was impossible to use ready-made solutions, so we did everything ourselves.

Buildings and streets
To make the city look realistic, we needed to model many buildings. We have worked out in detail the main highlights of the city and the main streets that our cart will pass through.
Buildings and city districts located in the background and not requiring detailed elaboration were generated based on open geodata from OpenStreetMap.

Textures
To create 3D textures, we used photographs of Amsterdam streets taken by us. We conducted several scouting sessions to take detailed photos of all the necessary streets along with the route and particular highlights.
For the convenience of the modellers, we even made a special internal service, where they could see all the photos taken near the selected location on the map.

Special effects
To make the ride more intense, we have added some things that can't be seen in real Amsterdam. For example, at the beginning of a trip, a visitor gets kidnapped by a gigantic but very friendly gorilla who throws them into the roller coaster cart.
We've also added whales and dragons. The dragon flame acts as a teleport. While visitors ride through it, they do not notice the loading of new sections of the route. Thus, the cart quickly moves between different parts of the city.

Cart
The attraction cart, unlike other objects that pass by at high speed, can be seen throughout the whole ride.
We made it very material, realistically shabby, and we also left a couple of Easter eggs: hello from Yekaterinburg (the home of JetStyle) – stickers with the White Tower and a manufacturer plate from Uraltransmash plant.

City sounds
Sound impressions are very important, so we made a 3D soundtrack of everything that is going on around: the whistle of the wind in your ears, the clang of mechanisms, even the scraping of tree branches against the cart.
All the sounds of the city are real Amsterdam trams, the Thalys train whistle, the bells of St. Nicholas Basilica and the Westerkerk church.