D-DAY 360

Reconstruction - two Germans fire an MG 42 machine gun at the troops on the beaches.

Credit: Courtesy of Jonathan Howells/Windfall Films

Take advantage of LiDAR technology to re-create the landscape of D-Day.

D-Day was a logistical effort on a scale never seen before or since. On the day itself, 3,000 planes dropped 23,000 airborne troops behind German lines, and 7,000 ships delivered around 20,000 military vehicles and 130,000 soldiers onto the beaches. Once on the shore, the troops had to negotiate two million mines buried in the sand, 46,000 fearsome beach obstacles and hundreds of miles of barbed wire, while dodging the shells and bullets fired by 40,000 German defenders.

D-DAY 360, airs Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 9 p.m. on WXXI World, takes advantage of LiDAR technology to re-create the landscape and allow viewers to switch effortlessly between the macro and the micro — pulling back for the big picture and zooming in to a close-up of a single soldier on the battlefield.