Background
Return to the Sacred Moment (Trở về thời khắc thiêng liêng) is a touring virtual reality programme produced under the direction of Voice of Vietnam (VOV), the country's national broadcaster, with its electronic newspaper VTC News and the Institute of Information and Communications Technology (CDIT) at the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology.
The programme places visitors in the crowd at Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi on 2 September 1945, the day President Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed.
The deployment
From 19 to 21 August 2026 the programme was staged at the Independence Palace national relic site in Ben Thanh Ward, Ho Chi Minh City, marking the 81st anniversary of the August Revolution and National Day alongside the 50th anniversary of the renaming of Saigon-Gia Dinh as Ho Chi Minh City. Organisers chose the site for its own place in the national story: it is where Vietnam's reunification was sealed in April 1975.
The installation ran daily from 08:00 to 18:00 and was free to enter. Visitors presented a citizen identity card or VNeID at the main gate, were issued a numbered wristband, and were admitted to the experience area in groups of 20, with staff helping each person into a headset.
The experience
Each session lasts roughly five minutes. Rather than watching archival footage, the visitor stands inside a reconstructed three-dimensional Ba Dinh Square and can look in any direction — at the independence platform, at the banners, and at the faces of the crowd. Cheering, applause and the sounds of the ceremony were rebuilt alongside the visuals, and visitors can raise a hand and take part in the pledge as the Declaration is read.
The production team drew on hundreds of historical documents, photographs, recordings and artefacts relating to 2 September 1945. Organisers have described recreating the sheer scale of the assembled crowd as the hardest part of the reconstruction.
Hardware and software
- Standalone consumer VR headsets, identifiable in event photography as Meta Quest 3 units
- A bespoke real-time 3D reconstruction built by CDIT, delivered as a native headset application running locally on each device
- Staff-supervised group sessions rather than a self-service kiosk model
Rollout and reach
The programme debuted in Hanoi for the 80th anniversary of National Day in 2025, where it drew more than 35,000 visitors, and was subsequently staged in Quang Ninh province. From 17 to 19 May 2026 it travelled to the Kim Lien special national relic site in Nghe An province — President Ho Chi Minh's home region — where more than 3,000 people took part. Organisers expected around 10,000 visitors across the three days at Independence Palace, and queues formed from early morning on the opening day.
Reception
The Ho Chi Minh City opening was attended by veterans of the 1945-1975 period and by city officials, including a vice chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee. Several veterans who had lived through the events described the reconstruction as a way of carrying the period to a generation that did not witness it; one, a former intelligence officer who had heard the 1945 declaration only over the radio, saw the square for the first time through the headset.
