Living Landscape: The Story of Sebago Lake

A novel 3D-printed viewing station for the Quest 3, featuring tactile controls for adjusting opacity and navigating through time.
Era One explores when this region was covered by the Laurentide Ice Sheet.
A windswept tundra grazed by mammoths and mastodons is overlaid onto the horizon.
Looking out over the lake through the Worldview XR viewing station prototype.
Elements of Wabenaki inhabitance appear on the shoreline.

Inspiration

For years, I’ve been searching for a way to overlay mixed-reality visualizations of the past and future onto real landscapes without requiring visitors to download an app or wear a headset. I wanted mixed reality to feel effortless—something anyone could walk up to and immediately experience.

A few months ago, the idea finally clicked: a solar-powered outdoor viewing station, similar to scenic-overlook binoculars, but powered by the Quest 3’s passthrough to deliver a place-based XR experience. As I sketched out the concept, a clear mission emerged: using immersive technology to elevate public environmental education and science outreach.

I soon founded Worldview XR, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to that mission. This competition pushed me to build the first functional prototype: a custom Quest mount, tactile controls, and an experience tied to a place I love. Seeing it come to life outdoors, and feeling it deepen my own connection to Sebago Lake’s history, has been incredibly meaningful.

What it does

Controls (for judges and remote testing)

Because the physical rotary knobs are part of the real-world prototype, this build maps them to the Quest controllers:

Left joystick up/down – Adjust opacity of overlays
Right joystick left/right – Fade between eras (time travel)

For judges who want to see the entire place-based experience, a full playthrough video is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFHIc7Mr41U

Living Landscape: The Story of Sebago Lake overlays multiple eras of the lake’s history onto the real shoreline through passthrough.

Using rotary knobs on a custom viewing station, visitors fade between:

A windswept Ice Age tundra with mammoths and mastodons
Representations of Wabanaki presence on the land
The modern lake environment

Low-poly reconstructions and UI layers composite directly into passthrough so the world transforms while staying aligned with the real landscape.

How we built it

The project was developed in Unity using the Meta XR SDK and a custom Timeline + ScriptableObject system for smoothly transitioning between eras. Rotary encoders connected via an HC-05 Bluetooth module give users tactile control over opacity and time.

Key components:

Timeline-driven fading system for overlaying environments and wildlife
3D-printed Quest 3 viewer mount for outdoor use
Bluetooth rotary hardware for physical interaction
Optimized low-poly terrain and assets for stable passthrough rendering
Place-based narration, written and recorded to contextualize each era and connect visitors emotionally to Sebago Lake’s history

The prototype was designed with outdoor deployment in mind.

Challenges we ran into

Bluetooth support on Quest is limited, so I rebuilt an open-source Android plugin to work with Unity 6 and Horizon OS despite having no prior plugin experience.

Passthrough added further challenges:

Render textures and media failing to initialize consistently
Default compression lowering image quality

Solving these required custom initialization steps and careful graphics tuning.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating a functional outdoor prototype with real hardware
Achieving smooth, bidirectional era transitions
Building an intuitive tactile interface
Demonstrating a system that can scale into a public installation
Sharing Maine’s environmental history through immersive XR

What we learned

I learned a tremendous amount about XR performance, passthrough compositing, and hardware-software integration—and how powerful XR becomes when grounded in real places and real stories.

What's next for Worldview XR

Collaborating with the University of Maine’s Advanced Manufacturing Center on a weatherproof, sun-shaded enclosure
Enhancing visuals with environment artists
Adding gaze and hand-tracking interactions
Adding passive reset for continuous visitors
Hosting pop-up exhibitions at Sebago Lake State Park
Expanding to more locations across Maine and beyond

My goal is to bring immersive climate education directly to the places where it matters most.