SMARTinez Tech
Yahoo News’ XR reporting on the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol is the most complex immersive project we have undertaken. After analyzing hundreds of photos and documenting legal proceedings in the event’s aftermath, we set out to visualize two things: How close did rioters get to elected officials in the building at the time, and what is the current status of some of the central figures involved. An XR visual investigation produced a 3D timeline of how close rioters came to Mike Pence within the US Senate.
Through our 3D reconstruction, we sought to establish the locations and movements of police officers, rioters, senators and Vice President Mike Pence throughout the breach of the Capitol. We gathered and evaluated more than 700 photos and videos taken by multiple media sources, including journalists for AP, Reuters, Getty, the New Yorker and HuffPost. We included in our research photos and videos captured by rioters that were later posted by ProPublica. We also examined the testimony of senators and Capitol security footage presented during the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump. We referenced relevant firsthand accounts from reporters and government officials collected from public interviews and records.
For the 3D scenes, we built a 3D environment based on a floor plan of the Capitol and compared that with photos and videos of the Senate floor and hallways, available through image libraries and C-Span. We made some changes to the scale of the walls (they are lowered) for clarity and to help our users navigate the 3D model. We illustrated all doors as closed unless photo evidence showed that they were opened during the course of the Capitol breach, either by rioters or fleeing lawmakers.
The interactivity was constructed using Immersive Composer. It was delivered via the WebXR platform to Yahoo! News.
As of January 2025, Yahoo has shutdown the XR servers. Live experiences are thus no longer available.
