This interactive combat narrative is about a heroic and crucial part of the Normandy invasion—one of the most significant campaigns of World War II. Created for the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) it’s a companion to a visitor center at the Pointe du Hoc battlefield location in France (currently under development).

ABMC projects strive to accurately retell accounts of America at war through interactive battle maps, oral histories, soldier databases and interpretive exhibits at U.S. military cemeteries and their supporting visitor centers around the world. These projects speak to veterans and their families, and those who want to better understand the significance of these events and the people that made them historic.

It was the project team’s goal to tell the whole story, with as much detail and content to support it as possible; with that in mind, this Web site was designed and built from a 280-page script. Developing a variety of interfaces to deliver that amount of content was quite challenging, so it was done through a combination of narrated video, animation, aerial and tactical maps, still assets with captions and short passages of text.

• The site has approximately 470 images and about 70 videos.

• A map tiling system manages the delivery of a large number of detailed zoom levels (with both aerial and tactical map modes); the same tiling system was adapted to display ultra-high resolution images in the Pre-invasion section so that the incredible detail of the photography is visible.