OrbitalMuseum

• 

  Starting environment of the game

• 

  Sputnik + actual beep from real life mission!

• 

  Yuri Gargarin Space Mission

• 

  Apollo footsteps

• 

  Apollo mission - one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind

• 

  Hubble Telescope

Inspiration

Space exploration represents humanity's greatest leaps of courage and curiosity. We wanted to create an experience that didn't just teach history, but made you feel it. Standing next to Sputnik in orbit, sitting inside Gagarin's capsule, walking on the Moon. A textbook can't do that. VR can. We found the biggest turning points in space exploration, and made an immersive experience that lets the user become an astronaut.

What it does

Orbital Museum is an immersive VR experience set inside a futuristic space museum orbiting Earth. Users are automatically guided through four pivotal moments in space history, including the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, Yuri Gagarin's Vostok 1 mission in 1961, the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969, and the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit. Each exhibit transports you directly into the historical moment through cinematic scene transitions, real historical audio recordings, and animated 3D environments.

How we built it

We built everything in Unity 6.3 LTS using the Universal Render Pipeline for Meta Quest 2 compatibility. The entire museum and all four exhibit scenes are generated procedurally through custom Unity Editor scripts, with 13 custom C# scripts total. We used Unity's XR Interaction Toolkit with OpenXR for VR functionality and deployed to the Quest via SideQuest and ADB. 3D models were sourced from NASA's public domain library and Sketchfab under CC Attribution licenses. All audio is original public domain recordings, with the actual Sputnik beep from 1957, Gagarin's real transmission, and Armstrong's historic words.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was URP shader compatibility, as every material in the scene turned magenta and had to be rewritten using URP/Lit shaders with custom property names. We wrote a FixMaterials editor script to automate this. The Meta Quest deployment pipeline was also a significant hurdle, as navigating developer mode, ADB debugging, SideQuest, and OpenXR configuration took considerable time. We also struggled with getting inactive GameObjects to be found and activated at runtime, which required restructuring our scene hierarchy so exhibits are siblings of the museum root rather than children.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Getting a fully functional VR experience deployed and running on a real headset in under 25 days while studying full-time. The procedural scene building system with the entire museum regenerates with one button click. The fade transition system between museum and exhibits works seamlessly. Using real historical audio from Gagarin and Armstrong gives the experience genuine emotional weight that placeholder sounds never could.

What we learned

VR development has a much steeper deployment pipeline than regular game development. Procedural scene generation via editor scripts saves enormous time compared to manual placement. And perhaps most importantly, which is scope aggressively early. We originally planned 5 interactive exhibits and scaled to 4 auto-play exhibits, which was the right call.

What's next for OrbitalMuseum

Full locomotion so users can physically walk between artifacts. A gaze-based interaction system so exhibits are user-triggered rather than auto-played. Expanding to 8+ exhibits covering the ISS, Mars rovers, Voyager, and the James Webb Space Telescope. Spatial 3D audio so sounds emanate from their actual locations in space. Higher fidelity 3D assets and NASA texture maps on all planetary bodies. Ultimately, a fully polished educational VR experience available on the Meta Quest Store.

Built With

• adb
• blender
• c#
• interactiontoolkit
• sidequest
• sketchfab
• unity
• universal-render-pipeline
• vr
• xr