Our team consists of members experienced in game making, in some form. As one of our members, Dennis, owns VR-gear, we got an idea of making a VR-game. The challenge we chose required us to use NASA's database as much as we could, so we eventually got an idea to make a game about our beloved home, planet Earth.

The solution we provide, doesn't necessarily solve a certain problem straightforward - instead, with the help of NASA's database, we wanted to provide something educational, while being interesting and accessible by everyone.

As Dennis had the most experience with programming, we trusted him the actual making of the game, with JavaScript as his tool. Later on, we faced a problem: we wouldn't get it to work on VR-gear. As we didn't have a lot of time, we couldn't fix it properly, and decided that having a somewhat working prototype will have to suffice. Fortunately, it worked on website as it was designed to be, without VR though.

While Dennis worked on the game itself, Honn and Mika concentrated on data side. Honn took care of researching images from NASA's image library. We needed a vector image of the world map, so Honn picked up a 'Blue Marble' picture for the vector image, and a picture of the Milky Way* for skybox.

As of future plans, if the project is successful, we would continue further development and potentially spread it on a global scale.

Here is a link to the concept. Interaction is not possible yet, as of time when writing.

*Image by Nick Risinger, CC BY-NC

Tags: earth, education, VR, gamification, video games, vaasa