Awards & Nominations

PCI Seaversity VR has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!

Global Nominee

The Challenge | Virtual Space Exploration

Generate Virtual Reality environments for the surface of the Moon and Mars! Obtain 3D models from NASA resources, such as Moon Trek and Mars Trek. Integrate 3D models of surface exploration systems and habitats. Develop and deploy the virtual world at a hosting service.

Mars2Earth VR

PCI Seaversity VR Team shall create a Virtual Reality program that focuses on the status of Mars and how we can learn from it. At the end of the program, the user shall realize that we must take care of Earth in order to avoid the fate of Mars.

The Team

Our team is composed of Serge, (Engineer and Project Lead), Ricardo (VR Program Lead), Charlou (Graphics and Animations Lead), Mika (Content Lead). We are a young team from a startup company, PCI (Philippine Cyber Institute), with great energy to pursue our big vision - to be at the forefront in creating Virtual Reality content designed for Learning and Education.

The Problem

The Mars was once covered with atmosphere and housed water flowing in rivers and lakes. But 4 billion years later, it's now a red, barren planet. What happened? Could this happen to Earth? How could we prevent this disaster from happening to our Home?

Based from NASA's studies, "The history of Mars since this point is one of dehydradation, gradual loss of a significant portion of its atmosphere, and near surface water turning into ice."

It's not yet clear how Mars lost its atmosphere but one thing is for sure: EARTH WILL BE LIFELESS IF WE LOSE OUR ATMOSPHERE.

"In its Fifth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 1,300 independent scientific experts from countries all over the world under the auspices of the United Nations, concluded there's a more than 95 percent probability that human activities over the past 50 years have warmed our planet."

With the pressing issues with global warming and melting of polar ice caps, it is evident that we are on our way to destroying our atmosphere. We are on our way to a Mars-like environment. We must stop this.

The Solution

While its remarkable for the science community for pushing space exploration in search of life and terraformation, we can learn a lot of lessons from our neighbor which we can apply to our present situation.

Our solution: Knock some sense into people.

Our team shall create an IMMERSIVE and INTERACTIVE Virtual Reality Program that will transport its users to Mars and learn Mars' experience with a dead atmosphere, contained mostly by carbon dioxide. The user shall then compare this to life on Earth, what would happen if our atmosphere gets deteriorated. By utilizing the experiential learning from immersive technologies, the program shall impact users up to his or her core. As some would say, to see is to believe.

At the end of the VR program, our ultimate goal is that each user shall realize: WE MUST PREVENT THIS FROM HAPPENING SOON. Nothing brings more success than empowering the spirit.

Mars2Earth VR

Platform: Windows Mixed Reality

Hardware: Head Mounted Display VR

We opt to use HMD instead mobile VR in order to support user experience we would want to achieve: IMMERSIVE and INTERACTIVE Gameplay

IMMERSIVE - Focus on detailed graphics and animation, incorporate sounds and physics to increase realism

INTERACTIVE - communicate and interact with the environment, assets.

GAMEPLAY

Launching to Mars! The user shall be traversing to Mars in a space shuttle. The user shall be briefed by a visual assistant and by NASA headquarters. During the travel, a brief background and history animation will be viewed in a linear video.

Mars Exploration. Upon landing on Mars, the player will determine, with the help of curiosity rover, evidences of life that once existed on Mars. He must complete challenges by giving commands like "Locate Terrains using Curiosity's Eyes" or "Collect Samples using SAM". This will showcase the efforts of NASA's exploration on Mars. After completing the challenges, the program will unlock and simulate the slow return of the atmosphere of Mars and thus bring the planet back to life.

Earth's Atmosphere Deterioration. After seeing Mars back to life, the player will be teleported back to Earth. Then suddenly, the environment will start to deteriorate. The user shall see a rapidly increase in carbon dioxide and other green house gases. Then in a fast transition, our Earth will now be lifeless.

Twist The user may bring back to the present by activating "Present Mode" wherein Mars is brought back to a wasteland and Earth back to a bountiful biodiversity. This will be a transi

Everyone, young or old, must learn the importance of taking care of our environment. Our program shall be an eye-opener to all users. It will be designed suitable both for young and adult.

What We've Done So Far

We have come up with a walkable Mars environment, an astronaut companion, and Curiosity Rover that will guide us with the exploration. Assets are taken from the NASA repository.

Challenges

Heavy Research. Global warming. Mars Data.

Building of more 3D Assets. Readily available assets are 'solid' meaning we have to re-draw or disassemble the different parts, especially of the Rover in order to include functions and interactions

Time and Resources. We want to build the whole program and we are sure that the project will entail cost similar to game development.

Market. In order to educate, we must bring the product to end-users. Making the product accessible to schools, science hubs, homes by partnering with public and private sector will make the product more effective.