Principal Investigator Patricia Maes
Project Website http://www.media.mit.edu/projects/body-quest/overview/
Body Quest is a room-scale virtual reality playground for learning about biology and chemistry. Learning about how complex microscopic 3D structures interact is hard on paper, and only slightly easier with videos or passive 3D simulations. Interactive, room-scale VR environments open up new possibilities for building an intuitive and visual understanding of these subjects -- and it can even be fun!
The video was submitted to the DOE EdSim Challenge. It is a fully functional prototype—the mixed reality video representing the physical and virtual experiences were composited in real-time by calibrating physical and virtual cameras, while filming in front of a green screen. The prototype is built around one particular biochemical interaction, whereby a viral protein cleaves sugar off the end of a mucus chain. We hope to develop future learning interactions around a general simulation backend, which will host both structured and unstructured learning experiences, including games.