A Cool Crowdfunded VR Project Will Take You To The Moon
Another Kickstarter project is gaining attention in the VR community, and this time, it’s totally different. This project is intriguingly interesting – it can bring you to the historic steps of Neil Armstrong. The project named “The Apollo 11 Virtual Reality Experience” is a virtual reality project launched by David Whelan on Kickstarter, intended as an educational VR app on the Oculus Rift targeted at children and students.
The startup, Immersive VR Education, headed by Whelan have already made a prototype of the app to work on the Rift, and the project seeks to get at least €30,000 for its materialization. The app will be showcasing the exclusive footage of the historic landing on the Moon that took place in 1969. The archive of the footage will be provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The startup has been already active in garnering support for the project from students in Dublin, Ireland where the team is based.
The Apollo 11 Virtual Reality Experience project is the latest among the projects involving virtual reality technology, aside from the initial focus of VR which is gaming and audio-visual content consumption. The project seeks a lot of support from people around the world using a spiel from Neil Armstrong’s most famous words on the 1969 Moon landing: “Neil took One Giant Leap back in 1969 and we are asking if you can take One Small Step today and back this project.”
According to Whelan, “There is no denying that Apollo 11 is still very much a work in progress. It still needs, at least, to add the lunar landing itself and the return voyage to feel complete.” This has been his statement with regards to the development of his VR project. He describes in the project description that his team have created a “journey” that they hope to engage its primary audience — students — and to give them a better understanding of what happened back in 1969. The project also promises to visually tell the historic event in a way that an ordinary person can experience it as if he was in that event.
Once the project reaches its initial funding goal, the team will release the final, polished version of the app, bundled with fully detailed models of the Saturn V rocket, Command Module, Lunar Lander, the Launch Tower, and the astronauts themselves; animated avatars, and exclusive interview footages of astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Also included within the app are the audio clips from NASA’s Control Center, the Lunar Lander, and the Command Module. An exclusively designed T-shirt will also be included in the release of the app. If the project is successfully funded, it is slated to be released later in July.
For more information on this cool Kickstarter VR project, please visit the following websites:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1436197736/the-apollo-11-virtual-reality-experience-education
http://www.immersivevreducation.com
http://www.virtualrealityreviewer.com/immersive-vr-education-launching-apollo-11-virtual-reality-education-experience-weekend/
