VR Underwater Expedition

An educational virtual experience, created to educate children about what lives deep underwater.

Comment

Inspiration

The more people know about the environment, the more they can make informed decisions that benefit it. We wanted to develop a solution that allows children and adults of all ages to better understand undersea life. People are well aware that litter can make its way to the ocean, but fewer people know about the wildlife that live there and how it could affect them.

What it does

It is an "on the rails" VR experience that requires no use for the controllers. The thinking behind this is that an experience for this would be to have multiple VR headsets installed in museums or education centres, they would have to be maintained by on the ground staff and people of all ages (and digital knowledge) would be able to view the experience. 3D models of marine wildlife move on a animation track where they swim towards you, allowing for users to stand in one spot and experience the built undersea world and not have to worry about potentially having to struggle to navigate it.

How we built it

Built with Unity, OpenXR Plugin, 3D Animated and rigged models of fish and other marine life, following an animation track where they swim towards you and around you.

Challenges we ran into

There is a great deal of client education required to get VR resources approved and someone willing to give you a shot. So challenges weren't really technological, but rather the social interactions of getting people excited to see what you're working on instead of people being weary of the unknown.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Myself and a co-developer secured funding to develop educational prototypes like this, and that recognition and validation is something to be very proud of. Now we continue with the process to bring attention and funding to more educational immersive experiences.

What we learned

That children love interactive learning materials and all have thoughts on what would make for better resources. It was fun being on the ground to test with an actual unbiased audience, and I now look forward to user testing with target audiences opposed to finding it a very daunting process.

What's next for VR Underwater Expedition

The Two oceans educational foundation is a non-profit org, but have been around for over 30 years, they are happy to allow us to continue to user test with their students, but in terms of coming up with funding to continue to iterate on creating a meaningful digital resource, that's the goal moving forward (which is also how I cam across this hackathon).

Built With

  • edutech
  • immersive
  • unity
  • vr
  • xrinteraction
  • xrinteractiontoolkit
Share this project:

Updates