Awake

Inspiration

Our inspiration stemmed from the issue that the media always bombards us with a few stories and focuses on the catastrophes that are close to home, rather than spreading the word about less known events that need help. We wanted to give these underrepresented people in need a voice and access to big donations.

Awake is designed to shed light on natural disasters around the world. Our mission is to educate and encourage individuals to about catastrophes they otherwise would not have known about. Enter our website to experience and learn about each catastrophe in Virtual Reality. People also have the option of donating to that cause.

What it does

Our project is a VR map that pinpoints several locations with people affected and in need. When clicked, the pin opens a window that tells users more about the catastrophe, as well as a donate and spread the word button, where they can share on Facebook or other social media.

How we built it

We used HTML, CSS and Javascript. We also used the ReliefWeb API to get real time data from current natural disasters that have recently occurred. We used Google Maps API to render the world map and get latitude and longitude positions to plot markers. To create the Virtual Reality experience for each of the locations, we used 360 degree image embedded in an iframe element.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into many challenges, but the main one was how to incorporate a webpage VR experience for our users. We first wanted to use React's WebVR but had trouble integrating this with Google Map's API.