With Star Trek it was still science fiction: the holodeck, the space where you could simulate virtual worlds, and you could see and hear and feel. Actually, we haven’t gotten that far yet, but the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office is making every effort: the result looks so real that a visitor on the “holodeck” leaned against a virtual car and is immediately fell on deaf ears.
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The Bavarian holodeck is unique in Germany. “We are the state criminal police office with the most experience in the field of virtual reality,” says Ralf Breker, who heads the forensic media technology department at the LKA’s Forensic Institute. “We’ve actually been working with VR since 2013, back then with the first developer kits. And we’ve been using this technology in investigative and forensic approaches since 2014.” In December 2016, Breker was quoted by the FAZ: “I would like to build a holodeck in the LKA.” Now it has.
The acquisition cost was approximately 670,000 euros and was financed with special funds which the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior awarded to the LKA in addition to the budget. Breker’s team has been using the holodeck for about a year and a half “in select cases, even during the final stages of development,” he says. In total, there have been around “20-30” cases so far, including the train crash in Burgrain near Garmisch-Partenkirchen in June 2022: “Since completion and release, every crime scene we have recorded has been made compatible with the holodeck.”
Virtual reality in Maxvorstadt
Breker and his colleague Dominic Franz demonstrate the deck at the LKA in Munich-Maxvorstadt. The holodeck is a room of approximately 70 square meters with darkened windows. About four fifths of the room is empty, this is the user area. Rails run along the top of the wall with cameras attached to them. The smallest part of the hall is the audience area: a long table, chairs, five or six VR glasses wired to the table. At the edge of the audience area is a computer with two monitors, behind it the server and an air conditioner above the door.
(Image: LKA Bavaria)
A crime scene’s “digital twin” is created in the holodeck. Breker and Franz show this using a real case: At the end of November 2021, a man had pulled another man onto the platform of the Stachus stop in Munich and pushed him in front of the approaching S-Bahn. The victim reacted in a flash: he moved away a little and dived under the opposite edge of the platform. There is a small alcove which offered protection. The man, however, was seriously injured.
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Digital recording of the crime scene
Subsequently, the police not only questioned the witnesses as usual, but two experts also digitally recorded the crime scene: A surveyor scanned the bus stop with a terrestrial LED laser scanner. The range of the scanner is 300 metres, its resolution is 40 million measuring points in 3.5 minutes and it can also be used at night. The scan takes six to eight hours, depending on the crime scene. In the case of a small, messy apartment it tends to be more because the surveyor has to avoid “shadows”. Furthermore, a photographer makes photogrammetric recordings. Furthermore, the police have received surveillance videos from the Deutsche Bahn, but this is not possible at every crime scene. The 3D reconstruction was created from all this data. This can also be viewed in 2D on the monitor.
In the Munich holodeck we wore the HTC Focus 3 VR glasses. With the glasses we have a vertical / horizontal view of 360 degrees in 4K resolution. And suddenly we’re in the middle of the bus stop VR reconstruction. We see the columns, the floor, the platform, the niche, the railings; we can move freely during the “stop”. We watch as the S-Bahn stops and the man is pushed in front of the S-Bahn.
What’s missing: In the fast-paced world of technology, there’s often time to sort through all the news and background information. On the weekend we want to take it, follow the back paths away from the current, try different perspectives and make the nuances audible.
