As Bernard Ivezic/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 24th of March, 2020, the Croatian supercomputer ''Isabella'' has been made available to researchers fighting the world's current coronavirus pandemic. The SRCE (HEART) University Computing Centre, which houses the Isabella supercomputer, called on all researchers to contact them and use their facilities in the fight against the virus.

"Srce would like to invite all researchers and scientists involved in coronavirus pandemic research effort to contact us if they need significant computing power and storage for modeling, simulation or data processing purposes," the university writes.

Isabella is a supercomputer made up of 3,100 processor cores for arbitrary demanding calculations and 12 NVIDIA V100 graphics processors suitable for AI algorithms. In addition, SRCE adds that their HTC Cloud provides 600 processor cores and 150 TB of data storage where arbitrary software systems and applications can be launched in a simple and flexible manner.

"Experts can also support the installation and setup of scientific applications required for research," SRCE noted.

Six years ago, it was announced that by 2020, Isabella would become one of the 500 fastest supercomputers in the whole world. It then had 800 cores and a speed of 10 TFLOPS. At that time, the slowest among the TOP500 of the world's supercomputers was the German Wetterdienst, which had 7280 processor cores and a speed of 133 TFLOPS, while the fastest was the Chinese Tianhe with 3.12 million cores and a speed of 33.8 thousand TFLOPS.

The first major step in building one of the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world in Croatia began two years ago, when at the celebration of its fifteenth anniversary, SRCE announced that Isabella would triple its capacity as another supercomputer, VELEbit, joined it.

In the meantime, the title of the strongest Croatian supercomputer was taken by Rijeka's Bura. However, a new supercomputer is being created at the national level in Croatia, which would connect existing supercomputers through the cloud, and this project, called the Croatian Science and Education Cloud, should create a supercomputer with 20,000 processors and 4 petabytes of memory.

For more on Croatian innovation, follow Made in Croatia. For rolling updates and information on coronavirus in Croatia, make sure to stay up to date with our dedicated section.

As Novac/Visnja Gotal writes on the 23rd of March, 2020, the Međimurje-based company Tehnix has developed and manufactured an interesting mobile Corona Cabin for the prevention of the spread of coronavirus and for people with viral symptoms.

The mobile cabin, measuring 3x6,40 metres in size, is equipped with a kitchen, a bathroom and a sleeping area, it has a heating and ventilation system and is suitable for longer stays.

''We developed the cabin primarily because of our drivers travelling to Europe. Upon arrival, they leave the truck to be disinfected, and are placed in a sterile corona cabin, where they can rest and remain there until their next  drive. It is prevention for them and for the people around them. The cabin is for the healthy, to avoid the sick, but also for the sick, so as not to infect the healthy,'' said Tehnix owner Đuro Horvat.

The drivers have no contact with other people throughout this process. They are instructed on what to do by telephone, and the directorate receives an impulse when the driver arrives at the cabin.

''Corona Cabins are designed for up to four people, the food is put in a separate compartment, without having had contact with each person. A Corona Cabin has also been set up in Luxembourg to serve the rest of Tehnix's drivers while travelling.

It took a week from us at Tehnix having the idea of a Corona Cabin to actually bringing it to the point of realisation,'' said, Đuro Horvat, adding that orders for the cabin, which costs 130,000 kuna, are already arriving from Croatia, Europe and the rest of the world.

He believes that, except for prevention, Tehnix's innovative cabins are ideal for treating patients in the event of a lack of hospital capacity. Equally, they can be acquired by private individuals.

Tehnix has also announced an innovative contactless waste disposal system, also for the purpose of virus prevention.

For more on Croatian companies, products and innovation, follow Made in Croatia. For rolling information on coronavirus in Croatia in English, stay up to date with out dedicated page.

Coronavirus is taking public health and the global economy by storm and spreading mercilessly, causing a previously unthinkable amount of problems for both people and businesses, and the costs will just keep on adding up for months to come, but it isn't all so bleak for one Sisak company.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Darko Bicak writes on the 19th of March, 2020, although the extent of the damage this situation will cause to the economy can for the moment only be estimated, there are also companies that are unlikely to even feel the effects of the coronavirus crisis, but will actually experience growth during these harsh conditions. One of them is Mozon from Sisak, which deals with ozone technology, which, after fluoride, is the strongest known oxidizer and is widely used in disinfection.

As explained by Zdravko Medved, the director of this Sisak company, ozone breaks down chemicals to basic, naturally occurring particles and is now widely used in the air and water disinfection industry.

"Ozone technology offers many benefits - it's effective at room temperature, it leaves no chemical traces (ozone is converted into oxygen), and it provides greater guarantees against pathogenic bacteria and other micro-organisms such as viruses.

Furthermore, the regular use of ozone saves on the use of chemicals, energy and water. In medicine, it's used as a sterilising agent for operating rooms, hospitals, dispensaries and waiting rooms,'' says Medved, adding that other extremely important uses of ozone should also be mentioned - as a water and air steriliser, in cooling and heating systems, in industrial plants, in post-fire restoration, in chemical synthesis, in soil maintenance, in ecology, in wastewater disposal, etc.

Ozone deactivates the SARS virus extremely quickly and efficiently, and various studies in the world have proved that to be true. Back in 2011, Zdravko Medved began cooperation with an international team of experts who wanted to extend the application of ozone to the area of ​​Southeastern Europe

"Scientists who are actively researching coronavirus have learned that viral particles can be dangerous for up to nine days when remaining in a space outside of the human body. Ozone is generally superior to other disinfectants because it reacts with all particles in the area while other disinfectants cover their share of the ''pest'' spectrum.

''Most scientific efforts on the effects of ozone have focused on the propensity of ozone to separate lipid molecules. Indeed, once a virus's lipid envelope is fragmented, its DNA or RNA nucleus cannot survive,'' explains Medved.

From this Sisak company, they point out that research has shown that precisely where large numbers of people from different parts of the world fluctuate, and that these areas of frequent human movement are an ideal place for the spread of pathogens by harmful airborne microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, fungi).

Therefore, they say, ozone is currently in high demand across the world and is very regularly used in the disinfection of various spaces where there is a great fluctuation of people - hospitals, ambulances and public transport, hotels, halls, convention centres, cafes, bus stations, trains, airports, schools, kindergartens, retirement homes, gyms, changing rooms, and so forth.

One of the world's busiest airports, more precisely the one in Dubai, has injected ozone into its very central air-conditioning system so that all buildings are enriched with this oxidant, while the airport in Shanghai is cleaned with ozone-enriched water.

This Sisak-based company came to ''life'' about ten years ago when Medved began collaborating with an international team of technology and innovation experts who wanted to expand the use of ozone into Southeastern Europe.

"Soon, the need to set up a company that would carry out all the activities in the region emerged, which is how Mozon came to be. We're continuing to cooperate with the world's top experts, but we also have our own laboratory and facilities in Sisak where we test and develop our products. We cover the whole region, and in addition to Croatia, we mostly work in Slovenia,'' Zdravko Medved stated.

Mozon states that they are able to partner with companies to offer ozone application solutions ranging from domestic use to use in large industrial plants.

Ozone is most widely used in Croatia for water disinfection since the water from water pumps is loaded with heavy metals and the chlorine doesn't help. Additionally, all water bottlers use ozone to disinfect their bottles and their other equipment. When it comes to space disinfection, this Sisak company mostly works alongside hotels, public transport companies and pharmacies.

Thus, in Croatia's southernmost city of Dubrovnik, they disinfected the entire public transport fleet which belongs to the company Libertas-Dubrovnik, just over the border in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Medjugorje, they dealt with accommodation and social facilities, and in Zagreb, they created the conditions for the transition from the old chlorinated pool water base to the new ozone disinfection base.

This current, ongoing situation with the coronavirus is also new to them, but they stress that they are fully prepared and have already offered their help to the Croatian Institute of Public Health.

"We've been getting a lot of inquiries over recent days about disinfecting all sorts of spaces, but part of our capacity has been made available to combat the spread of this virus. Just for comparison, the Italian region of Veneto has ordered the disinfection of all public transport vehicles including vessels in Venice, offices and other city premises are being ozonised, while in the city of Taranto in the Puglia region, all of the schools are being treated with ozone as part of a coronavirus prevention programme. Its wide-spread secret lies in the fact that it is the strongest natural disinfectant and no harmful by-products remain after it is used,'' concluded the director of this Sisak company.

For more on Croatian companies, follow Made in Croatia. For rolling information about coronavirus in Croatia, follow our dedicated section.

March 10, 2020 – VIDEO: BBC/Top Gear tests Rimac C_Two prototype which can go from 0 to 100 kph in under two seconds!

Tom Ford/Top Gear reviewed the Rimac electric hypercar prototype, with the 1.94 million EURO price tag, on March 10, 2020.

Rimac C_Two: Here are the Numbers

The technical tour-de-force that can reach 160 kph in 4.3 seconds. It will manage some 550 kilometers on a charge (WLTP) and be able to charge to 80 per cent in just half an hour on a fast charger. More pertinently, it will have four-wheel drive and insanely complicated torque vectoring, active aero and sophisticated battery management to prevent performance drop off.

This is a prototype that’s been in testing for several months. “Virtually nothing on this car will be the same as the production version,” says Mate Rimac cheerfully, CEO of his eponymous company, “but it represents a significant step on the journey.” Mate is driving first and the C_Two yelps away from a standstill flicking gravel into the as-yet-unlined arches. It creaks and squeaks a little, but it goes. Hard.

Did Mate Rimac let you have a drive?

Yep, he’s a generous bloke. The driver’s seat is both familiar and a little weird, with an aquarium-blue interior that feels like a CAD drawing, and two massive red buttons by my right elbow that isolate the electrics and disable the braking system.

Rimac C-Two | Rimac

First impressions?

The steering is non-production heavy, the vision surprisingly good - forwards, at least, because the rear view is filled with wires and mysterious boxes of digital think. The ride is… fine. Not hard, but obviously not optimised.

The acceleration is delivered in one long pull rather than the tidal surges of an ICE engine. The car feels half a tonne lighter than its prototype weight of two-and-a-quarter-plus tonnes, with the real deal ending up somewhere just under the double for production.

Rimac C-Two Interior | Rimac

Any final thoughts from the boss?

Just one: “I didn’t actually build this car because I needed to bring down my company C02 targets or because of particular environmental concerns,” he says, with disarming honesty and despite the fact he’s a vegan with a huge passion for environmentalism and eco-consciousness,

“I did it because EV is the best solution. It will make for a better car,” he added.

Follow our Made in Croatia page for updates on the Rimac C_Two electric hypercar and other Croatian innovations. More information and specifications on the car can be found here.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 8th of March, 2020, Boran and Andrej Loncaric and Ivica Skender from GDi, a Croatian company with thirty valuable years of experience, work in the field of modern geoinformatics solutions.

As coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to spread around the world with an apparent ease, it is most visible for people interested in tracking where the virus has penetrated on so-called online ''dashboards'', of which there are currently several.

One of the most relevant dashboards in terms of data sources is that of the Johns Hopkins University, where the coronavirus location data is updated as soon as it is released by official bodies of the state or by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

This simple and transparent display is for general public information and easy access, but above all, it is a useful tool for high-level decision makers and for the introduction and implementation of various measures to attempt to curb the virus and its spread around the globe. According to a report from Vecernji list, as dramatic as it may sound, life in the age of coronavirus is actually a life in crisis.

According to Andrej Loncaric, board member of the Croatian company GDi, otherwise a leading Central European company in the field of geoinformation solutions, tracking coronavirus' location is extremely important for crisis management because 85 percent of all information has its location component. He explains it in further detail with the very relevant example of coronavirus.

''In this case, we're interested in where hospitals, quarantines, people who've placed themselves in self-isolation, where there are ill people, whether or not they're at home, where they work, where they live... It's important to know where the critical infrastructure is, or where the roads and places of public gatherings are,'' Loncaric points out and continues:

''In order to get the right tool, we separate all this information into layers and then stack it up like a sandwich. When we connect and integrate the information, we get information solutions, and that's exactly what we do. If we don't have the spatial components, then we're losing a lot of information and therefore we don't really have the right picture, and most importantly, a proper insight into the situation,'' he says.

''ArcGIS software, or the software platform, integrates resources and databases, either locally or online. Many solutions are implemented from the cloud,'' explains Loncaric.

For more on Croatian companies, products and innovation, follow our dedicated Made in Croatia page.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 6th of March, 2020, the brand new Croatian fintech startup Revuto, which plans to attack competition such as the gigantic PayPal with a combination of a crypto wallet, its own debit cards and online subscription management, has begun to receive some of its first users.

This Croatian fintech startup is currently in its beta phase, with its application due to become available to users in the second half of this year. This is the first Croatian mobile wallet to announce that it will issue its own ''Revuto debit card'' which can be used at ATMs just like those issued by banks.

Miriam Belar, CEO and co-founder of the Croatian fintech startup, says they are developing a "subscription manager" application on the market that will be able to approve, block or delay the payment of any service at the time that subscription arrives, whether it's Netflix, Deezer, Spotify, Adobe, or even Google or Apple.

This is exactly whee the biggest difference with PayPal lies, which is otherwise heavily used in Croatia, among other things, for this purpose. ''In an era when more and more services are switching to subscription models, the number of users to whom such services in various '''free trial'' and ''subscription options'' are taking money without their control is increasing rapidly, so, this Revuto service should also represent savings for their costs,'' Belar says.

Revuto wants to get into this segment by using artificial intelligence that should allow for the maximum deferral of payment without suspending the service, then, by simply adding and sorting subscriptions by category, creating monthly and annual spending thresholds individually and by subscription categories.

In addition, it should allow users to share the cost of one or more selected subscriptions with other Revuto application users, gift subscriptions to friends, and other similar options.

Make sure to follow our dedicated Made in Croatia and business pages for more.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 7th of March, 2020, the success of the Miret startup via the Kickstarter campaign is significant if one knows that in one single day, it reached the level of turnover serious players and companies in that industry enjoy, with one third of its sales coming from exports.

It is a well known fact that startups in Croatia, as well as their respective successes, are mostly related to technological products, therefore it came as somewhat of a surprise when the Croatian Miret startup did things differently. It was on Kickstarter, the globally dominant crowdfunding platform, that this domestic company closed the largest sale of running shoes ever produced.

In one day, the Miret startup sold shoes in the amount of a quarter of a million kuna. In three days, it is expected that they will sell them for more than 50,000 euros, and the campaign on Kickstarter will last for a whole month.

The success of the Miret startup is interesting for many reasons, and the reasons for the level of interest isn't exclusive solely to startups, but also to much larger companies in Croatia, especially those looking for ways to expand their sales abroad. The first and obvious reason that makes the Miret startup and its campaign interesting is the initial sales volume.

A relatively new brand of Croatian-made trainers, Miret, which lacks the logistics of larger, more experienced players, has managed to reach the daily sales of far larger players in its industry.

Another thing that makes the Miret startup interesting is that in one single day, it immediately raised its share of its foreign sales to 30-40 percent. Namely, after Croatia, the next largest number of supporters, and consequently buyers of these Croatian shoes, come from the USA, Slovenia, Germany and Austria.

Supporters from Belgium, the Netherlands, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Canada are also represented in larger numbers. There are more reasons still. The Miret startup's shoes are not low-priced merchandise. Premium trainer brands in Croatia sell for an average price of 400 to 800 kuna, and often more.

Miret's trainers, which include a Croatian design brand, cost around 570 kuna (85 US dollars), and the Kickstarter campaign just showed that there are people who consider that a very affordable price. Miret produces trainers made from natural materials such as hemp, flax, corn, eucalyptus and wool. In total, they claim that as much as 97 percent of the material in the trainers are natural, making these shoes among the most environmentally friendly in the entire world.

In addition, after three years, the Miret startup's trainers will have almost completely broken down when used for compost. The owners of the Miret startup are brothers Domagoj and Hrvoje Boljar, for whom this is a continuation of the family footwear business, in which they have had their fair share of ups and downs.

Their entry onto the market, and thus the Kickstarter campaign, is in line with the trend of a growing demand for organic products.

The trainer industry is very ''dirty'' when it comes to the environment. The main problem is plastic, both due to the intensive use of petroleum products in the production of the shoes, and due to the fact that they tend to be non-degradable.

As many as sixteen million tonnes of non-degradable footwear end up in the sea annually, and despite the warnings, the problem of waste accumulation in the seas hasn't really been reduced. In 1950, it was estimated that 2 million tonnes of plastic had been dumped in the sea, and today an average of 400 million tonnes per year continues to be thrown into the sea.

Up until now, the level of success we've seen from the Miret startup has generally been experienced solely by technological products on Kickstarter, making what the Miret startup has managed to acheive something special indeed.

Make sure to follow our dedicated business and Made in Croatia pages for much more.

As Novac/Barbara Ban writes on the 6th of March, 2020, behind the name T \ 'n \' D Web hides a young maths and computer science duo - Toni Borina and Damir Numic-Mesa, Croatian students. These two outstanding graduates from Pula High School facilitated the easier work of their professors, as well as their colleagues at the school, with their project, marking another incredible piece of innovation made in Croatia.

Working together with the mentorship of Professor Nikola Vujacic, in a mere two months, the students created a web application within the project "School in the Palm of your Hand", which has already come to life among high school students across Pula.

The Croatian students' product has only been ''out'' for a month, and it is already widely used by professors and students because it provides them with the necessary information about the school's schedule and free classrooms in a very simple way. It can also be used to send SMS messages to inform people of all the important things that are happening in the school.

''School in the Palm of your Hand'' is a project consisting of four websites that make it easier for students and professors in their every day ''school lives''. The app can be used to create approvals for extracurricular activities, for example. There is also an interactive school schedule that can be used to search for schedules by professor, classroom, class and subject, and you can also choose to search for schedules in free classrooms that are available for a lecture,'' explains Damir.

He says that in conjunction with the technology giant from Vodnjan, Infobip, they also created an SMS notification system that allows students to easily send messages.

''This system may, for example, be used by the headmaster to inform students about the absence of a professor and who is giving a lecture or the like, which students wouldn't otherwise be able to find out. At the same time, there is a fourth webpage within the app, the Search Encyclopedia, expressed through the Google Custom Search platform, which allows you to search for specific terms or pages,'' the student says.

The application is available on the Internet at www.skolanadlanu.hr and can also be downloaded on mobile phones. Consideration is also being given to having it placed on the Google Play Store. Toni explains that the Croatian students came up with this idea because their school is big and it often happens that students waste a lot of time finding, for example, one of the professors they need.

''Often there was confusion about the replacements of professors, so we'd not know if there would be substitutes and who would hold our classes,'' says Toni, who has been working with Damir since the beginning of their high school days.

The app is yet another example of innovation not only made in Croatia, but made by Croatian students, and has been in use since February the 7th, 2020.

''It took us two months to complete the project, and the learning of programming languages alone ​​took place as part of a one-year workshop conducted Istria County's Technical Culture Community. The process of learning programming languages ​​has been a long one, in fact, you're constantly learning because you can never actually know everything, and then you start working slowly. We really worked hard on the application every day,'' Damir notes.

They say that they have tested it out on their colleagues, but also that they are constantly improving it.

''Applications should always be improved. For example, we noticed that the search was slow, so we sped it up,'' Toni points out.

Otherwise, the application, after being developed, was submitted to the county IT and software development competition, where it rightly earned 95 percentage points and won first place, and later it was submitted to a national competition, where the project was rated at 61.5 percent points. But for these young IT creatives who would like to enroll in Zagreb's FER after high school, this isn't the first project of its kind. During the last school year, they tried to programme another platform to help the school.

''Eight icons - The first project we did, was part of a larger team of eight students. The result of this project can be seen at the entrance to our school, at the info point. It has eight icons that make it easy to notify and display current information about school activities, schedules, and more. It's a little bit like this app,'' Damir tells us.

Also interesting was the students' collaboration with the wildly successful Infobip, which came about because some former high school students from Pula also work there.

''We needed the equipment and that's how we started working with Infobip. For example, they bought us computers for the library and donated some of their old equipment to us. Then we decided it would be good for the students to see how that company functions. And so it all started. Then it spread to other schools, but we were the pioneers in this,'' says the students' mentor, Vujacic.

For more applications, products and innovation made in Croatia, follow our dedicated Made in Croatia page.

As Novac/Filip Pavic writes on the 5th of March, 2020, Filipa Burul, a Croatian agronomist and 23-year-old student at the Faculty of Agriculture in Zagreb, is working on the CroCot mobile application, which is a "weed specialist". The application is one that will allow farmers, through their smartphones, to identify the type of weeds growing among their crops and get information on how to control them with herbicide.

With this idea, this young Croatian agronomist applied for the Student DIGI Award, organised by Jutarnji list, which selects the best young innovator and managed to enter into the final round of the top ten best innovations.

Born in Kastel Kambelovac, Filipa came to the Faculty of Agronomy in Zagreb five years ago to study phytomedicine. She is currently in her final year, and she has been in love with biology since childhood.

''I know it's a little unusual for someone from that area to come to study agronomy. We're not very well known for farming down there. When I became interested in biology in high school, my mum suggested I enroll in that college. People may refuse because they think it has to do with fields, hoes and digging, but that's not the case at all,'' the talented Croatian agronomist says.

A new trend in agriculture, as it is in many other branches, is digitalisation. That's why, with the support of her mentor, Klara Buric, a professor at the Institute of Herbology, Filipa started developing a CroCot weed recognition and suppression application that she plans to complete by the end of the year.

''Weeds are all plant species that we don't want to grow and pose a constant problem for farmers. They germinate a lot, which means they can be in the soil for years and wait for the right opportunity. It's impossible to know that they're there. In addition to the seeds being in the soil, they're easily transported with wind, tractor tyres, shoes, and they're often transmitted by animals. You know how often animals get thistles stuck to them, that's how weeds are dispersed,'' she says, giving a common example of seeds sticking to the fur of passing animals.

This remarkable Croatian agronomist is currently working on a large database of photographs of all types of weeds that occur in Croatia. Once completed, the mobile application would function so that the farmer captures a photo of the weeds with the camera on his mobile phone at an early stage of development, and then, on the basis of the collected photo database, analyse the image, that is, the colour, length and width of the leaves and other morphological characteristics of the plant, and receive suggestions on which herbicide is most effective in controlling it and in what amount.

''The application will be linked to the database, which will allow the optimal solution to be withdrawn from the database after the determination of the type of weed, ie, to properly select the herbicide according to its legally registered purpose. The farmer, without the application, would have to search independently in the Plant Protection Newsletter,'' she explains.

Not all herbicides are suitable for all weeds. As Filipa says, there are 190 different species with different spectrums of activity in Croatia. The improper use of herbicides isn't good for the soil, and it is not effective either because weeds produce resistance very quickly. An example of such a weed is ragweed. This particular plant causes many allergic reactions is widespread and resistant, primarily due to the misuse of herbicides.

''Herbicides have a bad reputation, but we have to use them, we have no choice at the moment. However, proper application must be done. The application recognises weeds in the cotyledon stage. It is then when they're at their most vulnerable and can be suppressed with a very small amount of targeted herbicide,'' she says.

An additional problem for farmers is that at this stage of development, the plants look completely different from the flowering plants and it's almost impossible, without extensive experience, to know what the weeds actually are.

In addition to farmers, users of the application could also be agricultural associations, cooperatives and organisations of agricultural producers, and agricultural pharmacies as distributors of pesticides. In addition, as this Croatian agronomist says, it would also benefit high schools and colleges when it comes to agriculture or food production. According to her, knowledge transfer between faculties and hands-on practice is still very weak.

''I hope that the application may one day be an open platform to treat insecticides or fungicides in the same way, in short, a place where all forms of protection against all pests can be found quickly. However, as of now, the use of herbicides, by comparison with other agents, is the dominant means of protection, by as much as 46 percent. In the future, I hope the application could also offer some non-chemical weed control solutions,'' concludes this innovative young Croatian agronomist.

Make sure to follow our dedicated Made in Croatia page for more on Croatian innovation.

Despite its flaws, nobody can deny that Croatia is an exceptionally innovative country which seems to breed incredible talent across all possible fields, from sport to science and everything in between. Ever fancied flying over Croatia without ever leaving the comfort of your armchair? Now you can, thanks to the successful combination of tourism and VR by the talented Sveb family from Zagreb.

As Lea Balenovic/Novac writes on the 1st of March, 2020, the Sveb family have designed something rather remarkable indeed.

I'm in a hurry to board. At the entrance to the cabin, two flight attendants, Lidija and Marta, await me and point me to my VIP seat in the first class section of the aircraft, where they provide me with the safety instructions. The captain speaks to me and we take off.

But, in fact, I'm not in an aircraft cabin or flying over Croatia. In Zagreb's popular Radiceva street, I'm sitting in an armchair and watching footage of Osijek, Zadar, Plitvice Lakes and Pula. But I don't have the slightest feeling that I haven't moved from my hometown and I have VR glasses on my head. I really think I'm flying over the walls of Dubrovnik. I look up, I see the sky. I look down, I see the sea.

The footage of the flight over Croatia isn't the usual type we usually come across on YouTube or on television, as it was filmed in 360 degrees. With a turn of my head, I can see everything around me, and virtual reality somehow loses any sense of being virtual. Flying over Croatia from the comfort of your own armchair is an option that has been being provided for the last two weeks in Zagreb, with Lidija and Marta at the beginning of the story, as well as Robert. The Sveb family that has been being developed for two years now.

''We'd have thrown this out onto the market before if there were no mistakes,'' laughs Robert Sveb, the original creator of the idea of ​​connecting virtual reality and tourism. The Sveb family had no one from to learn when it came to how to offer tourists something new with the help of advanced technology, and the only thing left to do was learn by good old trial and error.

''First, we shot everything with the wrong camera, so we had to throw the shots away, buy a new camera and start all over again. But then it was autumn, and it made no sense to send the drones up because of the bad weather. So we waited until spring,'' the Sveb family remembers.

In the meantime, they visited interntional travel fairs and attended conferences, acquired VR glasses, written text to accompany the footage (because it doesn't mean too much if we don't know what we're looking at), translated it into foreign languages, developed our own glasses control software, designed a marketing campaign, and created a website. And then re-recorded everything in 8K resolution (and the glasses are 4K).

For that, of course, they had to get all the shooting licenses again, hire drone operators, hire boats and skippers, and travel across Croatia. But all of this was easier for the Sveb family than finding space in downtown Zagreb.

''That was one of our biggest problems, we really struggled with that. We wanted to be easily accessible to tourists, that is, to be in the very heart of Zagreb. We applied to various state and city tenders, but since we were financing everything ourselves, we couldn't afford it. So re-recording was less of a hassle than finding space,'' Lidia Sveb explained. Still, these are good times when you know you have a good idea that no one in the world has figured it out.

''I worked for a major media outlet outside of Croatia, which aspires to be the voice of people from the third world. In addition, it works closely with various institutes and faculties conducting research on new technologies and digital media, and so virtual reality emerged on the horizon. Research has shown that storytelling in VR fosters eight times more empathy than classic storytelling does, even when compared to ordinary videos,'' explained Robert Sveb.

"I thought it would be good to create a newsroom that would deal with difficult human stories using VR technology and I was thrilled with the results," he added. When he returned to Croatia, he simply had to try something with "this new technology".

The combination of VR and tourism was simply more viable and cheaper than other ideas that came to the mind of this experienced manager. In addition, tourism in Croatia is still an enormous economic branch on which one can quite easily live.

His wife, Lidija, and daughter, Marta, thought this idea was excellent, and when he told them at his desk what had happened, it didn't take long for them to join in with the business development as the Sveb family business.

''I have a degree in psychology, and I've always been most interested in developing creativity. People learn best when they're part of something, when they can see, hear, and simply feel at the same time, and VR provides that. In addition to flying over Croatia, you can also listen to an educational story about it, which proved to be very useful,'' says Marta Sveb.

HRVR, as they called their boutique, has so far been visited by Americans, Germans, Brits, Argentines and, of course, other Croats.

''Oh, wow, I didn't know Croatia was so beautiful,'' go the typical reactions from foreigners.

Croats, however, react slightly differently, they have less focus on the beauty of their homeland, but are instead more focused on the technology and the unprecedented perspective of Croatian attractions.

''One visitor told us that she wanted to take her mobile phone and record in the middle of the flight, but then she remembered that the experience wasn't actually real.

''It's virtual, but there is nothing more realistic,'' claims the Sveb family, who are the very first in the entire world to offer such a tour (or at least it was the first to actually achieve it). Lidija told us that recently such a tour as the ''future of tourism'' was mentioned in Like, a travel magazine that comes out once a month.

''A PhD student said that there are tours where tourists wear VR glasses and when they arrive at a certain location, animations appear that bring history to life for the tourists, and said that in the future, people will be able to see Earth from their airmchairs. Obviously, we have already brought the future to Zagreb,'' Lidija Sveb says proudly.

She is otherwise an entrepreneur with many years of experience working with people. Therefore, this role simply belonged to her.

The flight lasts a mere seven minutes, and each and every minute is carefully thought out.

''Studies have shown that after seven minutes of virtual reality, the brain becomes accustomed to it and that there is a possibility that when people take off their glasses off later, they become unwell, we didn't want that to happen at all,'' explained Robert Sveb.

The Sveb family business is based on exhaustive analysis, and before everything else, they conducted market research to see if they had a chance to be able to start making money from it. So they came to a decision on the price of the experience they were selling. A flight over Croatia costs 80 kuna.

There are twelve locations that have been selected according to attendance, and the six foreign languages ​​where you can hear the story of Croatia and its beauty: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Korean, are the result of statistics on the number of visitors who have been visiting the Croatian capital for the last three years. Translators have translated the text into these languages, and it is spoken by robots. The Croatian language is the only pre-recorded text, and the remaining languages ​​are a product of artificial intelligence.

''The text is in the cloud, and robots speak it over and over again, constantly improving, and their speech becomes human, that is, it ceases to be monotonous and begins to truly tell the story,'' Robert says.

New languages ​​are already in the pipeline and their heads are already full of new ideas.

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