Poetry in Space

Poetry in Space: An Immersive Journey through the Universe in Pursuit of Meaning

Inspiration

The heart of VR as entertainment is the immersion of the individual: of being able to be plunged into a world that previously one could only view on a distanced screen. We wanted to use this experience to allow the viewer to become a part of a world that leaves him or her with some meaningful perspective on our place in the universe.

What it does

Poetry in space is an awe-inspiring poetic and musical journey exploring the scale of our solar system. The viewer begins the journey by gazing at Earth and finding paths throughout the solar system to view the planets and distant milky way. Set to ambient music and quotes by the world's most inspiring thinkers, the viewer is invited into an immersive experience of the spirit behind the text.

How we built it

We used Unity for the VR programming (intended for the HP mixed reality headset) and Cubase for the sound engineering. But first, we began with pen and paper, brainstorming, listing, sketching.

Challenges we ran into

Overall, our main challenge was overcoming a steep learning curve. The team leader had no coding experience. Our developer had to learn Unity overnight--when he first joined the team, he was proficient in C++ and Python.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Despite the big gaps in knowledge that we started out with, we had a very strong team of diverse skills: we had a storyteller/artist, coder, and sound engineer. We complemented each other's strengths while not stepping on each other's toes.

What we learned

Although we could have benefited from members with more skills or just to help lighten the workload, our limited skills and team size pushed us to discover what we were really capable of. Usually, the horizon of our limits is a lot further away than it seems. Any good hackathon should leave you wonderfully exhausted and proud of yourself, knowing you're capable of a lot more than you might imagine.

A fun thing we learned while working is that there is a whole world of creative commons material out there. We searched for assets all over the internet to inspire and supplement the code we'd written and audio we had produced from scratch. Although we ended up producing a lot of our own material anyway, we did discover that there is an immense amount of creative commons 2D, 3D, and audio material out there. NASA and Hubble are a great resource for any space-lovers.

What's next for Poetry in Space

We had originally imagined a much larger journey than the one we produced. One day, Poetry in Space could be a VR-film experience in which the viewer is transported through and beyond our galaxy, visiting some of cosmo's most beautiful and remarkable places, and meditating on the significance of our place in the universe.

Built With

• cubase
• unity