A virtual reality experience on the red planet
Science In Mars VR is an educational game that aims to use Virtual Reality to take school students to the red planet to learn science through first-person experiences. The main purpose of this game is to make science more interesting for students, and create an environment where students feel happy and are eager to learn.
Of students are either not happy or very unhappy regarding teaching methods in school. Leitão e Carvalho, 2009
According to the constructivist theory, first-person experiences is the main way knowledge is solidified in the human brain.
Bill Win, 1993
The method chosen for the production of this game was the one proposed by Chandler (2012) on the book “The Game Production Handbook”. This method consists in Pre-production, Production, Testing and Wrap-up.
In order to understand the current experiences related to Science in Mars, I have analysed Mars: An Interactive Journey and Mars: 2030 Experience on a SWOT matrix
Broad analysis of the overall Strengths and Weeknesses of the project
After having the game production method, research basis and problem defined, the ideation process began through Brainstorming of ideas focusing on solving the problem of creating a fun and efficient way for students to learn and be interested in science.
One of the main requirements for this project is to create an experience that will be accessible and playable even in low end devices. However, Virtual Reality is extremely heavy on GPU and it can cause overheating and lagging in older devices if not optimized the right way.
To remediate that, I have changed game assets to low-poly versions, baked all the lights into the scene and converted the Unity terrain into a mesh, making the experience much lighter and expanding the device support for the game.
