Seed

Kuching, Sarawak | Unlocking the Secrets of the Sun

Orbit Away with U.S.O.S.

High-Level Project Summary

To discover the secrets of the Sun, SEED created an app that uses the point of view of an orbiting satellite named Unlocking the secrets of the Sun (U.S.O.S.). Using gyro to bring immersive experience and interactivity with Quests that teaches impacts of the Sun to Earth, brings the gap of learning about the Sun closer through mobile devices that are accessible at any time. Reaching a wider audience that not only wants to know more about the Sun but also those who never realize the Sun's impact, and not only that, bringing discovery senses at the comfort of their time and space is what SEED strives to achieve.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rOGSrlFsgOJO8-zYE3pMptU7cA_6yp8X/view?usp=sharing

Link to Final Project

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zkmsENNKcaoXba2KKXSZgCDZp6-ajKyN/view?usp=sharing

Detailed Project Description

U.S.O.S. is currently playable on the mobile phone, Android only.

U.S.O.S is a virtual satellite stimulation and gamification idea, that helps people on Earth with their burning questions about the Sun. It will orbit endlessly around from the Earth to the Sun. When there are questions about the Sun from Earth, it will turn into a quest for U.S.O.S to help them out.

U.S.O.S.will bring the people on Earth on a beautiful visual and interactive journey to have the questions answered by using a bot control to insert in their chats. Players get to experience what it feels like traveling in the eyes of a satellite. In addition to that, U.S.O.S will be challenged into avoiding orbital debris floating in space, collecting accurate data from various locations in the map and quest that would depend on travel duration to experience the life on the Solar system, for example, the Sun Cycle Quest, an 11-year quest that requires players to orbit 11 times to see the difference in the Sun and accept short quest along the way. Upon finishing the quest, you get an animation that relates the impact of the Sun on the Earth.

SEED would like to take the experience into VR. More on that, Seek and connect Storytellers within the space enthusiast community through servers like discord to share and bring in their stories into the app for real-life engagement and to feel involved together and of course, expand positive awareness about the Sun and its impacts on us.

SEED's main software is using Adobe software like Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere Pro, other than that there is Krita, Canva, Unity, and Microsoft Visual Studio.

SpaceApps Sarawak special requirement: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MXEcl8_A0YoSUEQeqLry5iql0RXBGqJg/view?usp=sharing

Slides: https://www.canva.com/design/DAErj4S26dU/-EZ2uwZ5b8jXDTMP3V5qlQ/view?utm_content=DAErj4S26dU&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink

Space Agency Data

SEED has used data from Nasa Space App resources, Nasa Science, Nasa Scientific Visualization Studio, and Nasa Space Place.

Hackathon Journey

Through this hackathon, the event has really taught the team to stay organized, plan things ahead more, communicate and create deeper chemistry as well. The hackathon has given a team full of multimedia designer students a chance to break down information from NASA and apply it to create an app in a short time.

The main reason SEED chose the Unlocking the secrets of the Sun challenge is to create something immersive and interactive for the people who are interested in learning about the Sun regardless being in a pandemic or not. SEED was determined to create something not temporary but an app that can work in a long run and give replayability and an educational experience.

SEED’s approach to developing this app has been a huge amount of research on Nasa’s resources as none of us have a background in the challenge’s related field in science or astrology which is a humble opportunity for SEED to take advantage of this hackathon to learn about space during this journey as well. The planning of assets, the flow of the gameplay, UI and UX in-depth discussions, the style that fits the audience, and the mechanics.

SEED has researched many ways to overcome the challenges of what-ifs and setbacks before the hackathon begun, especially in coding, because programming is very unpredictable. SEED will always be keen on learning the ways hardships, challenges, and setbacks, and believe the more mistakes made, the faster the lesson is learned.

SEED would like to thank John Hii Ing Kieng, our lecturer from the Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak as he introduced us to this challenge and also bring our team to push our limits all the time.