Viking Line is a pioneer in the development of sustainable passenger ships of the future. Their mission is to offer the most memorable cruising experiences on the most sustainable, energy-efficient, and climate-smart vessels in the Baltic sea.
A significant milestone in this mission has been reached as the construction of Viking Line’s newest vessel, Viking Glory, has been completed in Xiamen Shipbuilding Industry’s shipyard in China, where it has been in production since 2018. It will be the first cruise ferry in the world that uses ABB’s Azipod® electric propulsion, a system that saves both time and energy in manoeuvring the vessel. Thanks to the brand-new multi-fuel engines from Wärtsilä, fuel consumption is further optimised. Other Swedish and Finnish inventions make it possible to convert both waste heat from the vessel’s engines and waste cooling power from liquefied natural gas into electricity.
While the physical ship was being constructed on the other side of the globe, in Finland and Sweden Viking Line commissioned the creation of a virtual version of the ship together with MiTale, as our team of experts in architectural visualization and immersive VR experiences matched the needs of the project.
The collaboration between Viking Line and MiTale started in 2019 after a recommendation and introduction by the founder and Chairperson of the Finnish Virtual Reality Association (FIVR), Olli Sinerma, who was already involved in an ongoing project with Viking Line. MiTale agreed to create a very short VR-demo for the Viking Line management team, that would provide a glimpse into how gaming technology could be used to scale up marketing and sales, improve customer engagement, and show the true spectacle of Viking Glory as the first vessel of its kind!
In addition to being used to create 2D visualizations of the ship to be used in marketing, the creation of a virtual version of Viking Glory and the use of virtual reality and gamification enabled the management and staff of Viking Line to explore the ship freely, interact with the environment and watch the magnificent, simulated archipelago glide by outside the ship on its route between Turku and Stockholm.
A full virtual tour of the vessel has been in the development ever since the success of the VR-demo. The collaboration between Viking Line and MiTale has been a creative and inspirational endeavour for the whole team. MiTale’s lead developers on this project were Oskari Tamminen, Mikael Perilä and Aapo Peltola, who wish to share some of their insights:
“This was an amazing learning experience! We have worked on many different projects in virtual reality and visualizations before, yet the scale and significance of this project enabled us to really push beyond our boundaries and create a virtual replica of the stunning Viking Glory! We are profoundly grateful for the trust and the opportunity that the Viking Line management gave us, and we especially want to offer our thanks to Michaela Lindström (Project Manager, launch of newbuilding) and Lotta Lindroos (Development Manager) for facilitating this fantastic collaboration. We are looking forward to continuing this fruitful partnership between Viking Line and MiTale!“
Viking Glory had an official launch on the 26th of January 2021 – enjoy the tour!
MiTale Dev-Blog 