Organized by Prof. Tina Korani/ School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Climate VR Series: A Mixed Reality Hackathon
Thank you everyone for attending Climate VR Series Hackathon at San Jose State University! The event was a complete success with a turnout of over 100 guests, attending the speakers' presentations and participating in the AR storytelling design contest.
We would also like to extend our thanks to our amazing sponsors: the College of Humanities & the Arts Artistic Excellence Programming Grant and Adobe.
Below you can find a recording of the presentations on April 27 and learn about the design contest winning projects.
Climate VR Series Speakers
Juliano Calil, Ph.D., MESM, BBA
CO-FOUNDER VIRTUALPLANET.TECH
Immersive Experiences in Climate Adaptation, Community Outreach, and Education: As communities worldwide contend with the impacts of climate change including more frequent flooding and coastal erosion, heatwaves, and wildfires, a critical piece of the puzzle has become educating stakeholders in insightful and practical ways. In this presentation, Dr. Calil will highlight the main findings and lessons learned from recent projects that applied Virtual Reality tools to communicate climate issues and propose solutions. These projects are being deployed at multiple locations, including Turner Station, MD, Santa Cruz, CA, Long Beach, CA, Paradise, CA, and Cleveland, OH. His work was showcased in multiple media outlets, including Forbes Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR.
Sanaz Saeidi, Ph.D.
Mixed Reality Lead at Microsoft / Professor at University of Washington
Exploring Occupant Behaviors in Immersive Virtual Environment to Enhance the Design and Engineering of Sustainable Buildings: This presentation is about simulating building occupant behavior as an essential factor to improve our understanding of building energy performance. To date, most of the information related to the occupancy behaviors has been gathered through field observations and/or performing experiments within the lab environments. Even though these common data collection methods are effective and reliable for the existing buildings, using such data to project occupant behaviors in other contexts is likely to lead to uncertainties. The premise of this presentation is to provide future building users with the experience of non-physically existent environments. The research behind this presentation sheds light on an innovative experimental approach, i.e. multi-sensory Immersive Virtual Environments (MSIVE) enabling explorations of human dynamics and perception of future buildings during the design and engineering stages.
Clayton Whittle
LEARNING DESIGNER
The Environmental Game Design Playbook Framework: A guide to creating environmentally impactful games: In this presentation, Clayton Whittle outlines the core elements of the Environmental Game Design Playbook (EGDP) Framework. The EGDP is a designer/developer-facing framework for creating games that can affect real change. Drawing from literature and research in environmental psychology, learning sciences, and serious games, the EGDP provides actionable “tactics” for game designers. Attendees will walk away with primer-level knowledge of environmental persuasion psychology, and more than 30 concrete design tactics to include in game design.
Christodoulos Kyriakopoulos, Ph.D.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF GEOPHYSICS, AT CENTER FOR EARTHQUAKE RESEARCH AND INFORMATION (CERI)
Exploring Earthquake Faults and Dynamic Rupture through Virtual Reality: The field of earth sciences, and in particular the processes behind the generation of earthquakes, are among the hardest to represent and explain to the public. The difficulty in representing earthquake-related topics can be summarized in two parts. Most tectonic processes take place several kilometers beneath the earth’s surface, making direct observation almost impossible. In addition, representing fault systems requires the use of complex three-dimensional (3D) models that are hard to visualize. Virtual Reality (VR) is the ideal tool to visualize such phenomena and improve communication between the public and earthquake scientists. My presentation will focus on how we can use VR to represent scientific data with a primary focus on earthquakes and earthquake faults. More specifically, I’m discussing how we used the free software Paraview to generate a VR experience based on the major active California faults in my Visualization Lab. I will also discuss the use of the Paraview remote collaboration mode that allows the joint exploration (using Avatars of different users) of the fault system from different geographic locations.
Alexandre Martinez, Ph.D.
EXPOSURE MODELER, RMS INC.
Exploring climate change impact on coastal flooding with virtual environments: This presentation is about the usage of photorealistic virtual environments for climate change communication, with a special focus on sea-level rise impacts on coastal floodings. In this presentation, I will cover the motivations and advantages of using VR for such purposes as well as one example in Corona Del Mar, California.
Danny So-Haeg & Christian Bannister
Danny: Interactive Exhibit Developer / Christian: Experience Designer
Sustainable Cities in Projected Reality: Christian Bannister and Danny So-Haeg will be sharing insights from the development of Sustainable Cities, a unique “projected reality” experience where users can control any of the six cities represented in this virtual representation of the San Francisco Bay Area. The projected graphics on the 3D-printed cities dynamically represent the user’s input while the sixty motorized buildings move up or down in accordance with their city’s design.
Adobe Aero Creative Contest!
For the Augmented Reality contest students were invited to collaborate with other students in a beginner-friendly augmented reality creative challenge. Students were to create an Augmented Reality (AR) experience to show climate change's side effects on our environment and anything contributing to climate change.
Below you can find the winning projects for this year's AR creative contest
First Place
Park Cleanup game
Joe Kim, John Culbertson, Nehemiah Shelton
For the Climate VR series: a mixed reality hackathon, we created a park cleanup game. Users will be able to learn about 3 different types of recycling which are trash, recycle, and compost. There are several different items on the ground, and users are asked to choose the right bin to put each item in. There are unlimited tries until users choose the right answer, and when they do, the character will pick up the item and put it in the right bin. By playing this game, users will be able to learn the importance of recycling and they will be able to distinguish which items are trash, recyclable, or compostable.
Second Place
About Life of Food
Michael Martinez, Christopher Nguyen, Fred Guess
Life Of Food is an interactive Augmented Reality experience created by Fred Guess, Michael Martinez, and Christopher Nguyen that takes users on a journey of the food cycle. Consisting of the stages of farming, production, distribution, and consumption, the experience was created to educate users on what resources are being used to produce and distribute food, as well as emphasize how much food is typically wasted. As a result of the harvesting, production, transportation, and consumption of food, there are crucial points that need to be addressed as a society to resolve the issues of dwindling resources, rising carbon and greenhouse gas emissions, and food waste overall. What we hope to achieve with this experience is for users to be more cautious about their food consumption habits, as well as to be educated about the powers of composting and doing their part in making our world more sustainable and green.
Third Place
Arctic Climate Change
Joe Neto, Rishi Vyas
For our AR climate change project, we focused our attention on the topic of glaciers. Glaciers have been shaping our world for millions of years. However, as climate change warms the planet, the glaciers are disappearing. This is not only altering the landscapes they are leaving behind, but also changing our oceans, weather, and life on earth as we know it. When our character enters the AR Arctic, the character interacts with eight various informative exhibitions, which explain and animate the effects of climate change affecting the glaciers and the various animals in the surrounding environment.
Award of Excellence I
Fashion Island
Kim Fletcher, Sarah Sanger
As Resin learns that Fast Fashion is the #3 polluter worldwide, she attended a Fast Fashion Expo. At the Expo, she learns about the role fertilizer plays in the release of Greenhouse gases such as C02 and N02. She learns that one T-shirt uses over 200 gallons of water to produce and that in the making of fabrics toxic dyes are released into our streams and oceans. She then learns thatcher favorite workout clothes contribute to the accumulation of microplastic in our oceans, further polluting them and contributing to the deaths of wildlife and even the oceans themselves. Finally, she learns that 87% of all fabric created in a given year will be disposed of - either in a landfill or by being burned. After leaving Resin reflects on what she has learned and how she can make a difference. She can buy fewer items, but better quality items, which leads to longer product life. She learns that she can wash her clothes in cold water and dry them on the line to avoid using up natural resources and that she can also trade, reuse, and buy used clothing. She has the power to make a difference in global warming.
Award of Excellence II
Save The Forest
Zehra Momini, Rachelle Bedell
Our AR experience tells the story of deforestation over the years. At the start, you will experience what a forest looked like around 300 years ago. As you keep walking, you will experience how a forest looked 100 years ago. The final stage is a representation of how many forests look now. As we look with alarm at the increasing threats and very real consequences of climate change, forests, if we will protect them, can be a huge part of the answer. In just over the last 100 years, the world lost as much forest as it had in the previous 9,000 years. The biggest issue driving deforestation is what we eat; most deforestation is caused by the clearing of land for farming, cattle ranching, and grazing of livestock. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change. And scientists believe that tropical forests alone if preserved and restored, can provide 23 percent of the climate mitigation needed over the next decade to meet the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius as set forth in the Paris Agreement. However, there is hope. Rates of deforestation peaked in the 19080s and have been on the decline since then. And increases in crop yield and new innovations such as lab-grown meat and meat substitute products mean the per capita demand for agricultural land continues to fall.
Award of Excellence III
Fast Fashion
Andrea Casas Topete, Merlina San Nicolás Leyva
Through our Augmented Reality (AR) experience, we will explain how fast fashion affects our environment. Fast fashion can be defined as cheap trendy clothes made quickly to meet consumer demand. The high turnover rate is because people want trendy garments as soon as they see a celebrity or social media influencer wearing them at an affordable price. However, this comes at a high price, as the world's largest polluter in the fashion industry. With this high demand, these companies use cheap and toxic textile dyes. The fast fashion industry is the largest polluter of clean water globally.
You will walk through a narrated educational AR experience. We used illustrations to show the effects of fashion and alternative outlets for people to shop at. We chose earthly tones like brown, green, and light blue to show the sustainability options. Then we choose red and yellow to show the dangerous side of fast fashion.
Overall, we hope that this AR experience shines a light on this ever-growing issue damaging our planet.
Honorable Mention II
Drought AR Experience
Maitreyee Gaikwad, Adam Sheehy
An AR experience shows the harsh results of a drought on a landscape. Outlining how a lush and bountiful forest with many different types of foliage and a water supply can slowly deteriorate and deplete in quality. This AR experience outlines step by step how this event occurs,
Sponsored by the College of Humanities & the Arts Artistic Excellence Programming Grant