T239 Leveraging Virtual Spaces for Geoscience Education: Exploration and Learning through Augmented and Virtual Reality (Posters)

Wednesday, 12 October 2022
9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Exhibit Hall F

ANCIENT OCEANS: A MOBILE GAME AND AUGMENTED REALITY EXPERIENCE

Paper number: T239-12
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM

Authors

Abstract

Appreciation for the vast weirdness of ocean life in deep time, let alone ocean life today, is difficult to share with a wide audience. We present the framework of a mobile game and augmented reality experience that invites participants into Ancient Oceans. In the mobile game (designed for phones and tablets), each player will be an ammonite, a now-extinct squid-like cephalopod that sported a spiral conch shell. The player can design their ammonite’s conch and body, then move through levels of gameplay by chasing prey and dodging predators. Each level of the game represents a geologic time period, so the specific animals that comprise the prey, predators, and background will change for each level. The game thus shows the breadth and intensity of change in life through time, without any dry exposition or explicit educational spiel. Moreover, each player’s mobility in the game (swimming efficiency, speed, maneuverability) will correspond to their chosen conch shape, reflecting emerging research that reconstructs the swimming potential of ammonite animals from their fossil conch shells. Periodic updates to the game’s internal capability matrix will let gameplay track results of ongoing experiments and simulations. The augmented reality experience is crafted from components of the game, creating scenes tailored to public spaces including museums, libraries, and aquariums. Initially, two distinct scenes will be prepared: the Early Jurassic of coastal Pangea; and the Late Cretaceous of the Western Interior Seaway. Using their own personal devices (via posted QR codes that link to an online version) or the venue’s tablets (distributed by docents or tethered to displays) participants can compare the very different ammonites that flourished during each interval. The animals will appear to be swimming among the venue’s existing infrastructure (grand lobbies; centerpiece exhibit halls; etc.), allowing the participants to conceive of these strange creatures on the scale of their own daily encounters. This ambitious project has required years of design and programming by a dedicated team, and contributes to the Broader Impacts of work supported by the National Science Foundation.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 54, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2022AM-383790

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