Shot Pattern

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  US Map showing topographic features to aid in orientation

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  PBR expended shotgun shell

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  Manufacture of fire Arms by type

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  Gun Fatalities and injuries reported since 1966

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  VR Representation accumulated lives lost in a geospatial location

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  Description of each Gun fatality incident

Inspiration

Using familiar tools - maps, sounds, visual effects, text - illustrate the increasing frequency of gun violence and illustrate the lives lost without resorting to offensive or morbid imagery (crosses, graves, etc.,) and then contrast that with the economic footprint of the small arms industry.

What it does

We display a map and a timeline. Using data to plot the incidence of mass shootings, the user hears gunfire erupting from the location of each incident on the map. Piles of expended ammo litter the map over time, each shell casing representing a fatality at that incident.

How we built it

This project is built in Unity 2018.4.2f1 The Steam Audio collider was implemented to orchestrate the sound of events. Data has been parsed in from the U.S. Mass Shooting database at Kaggle.com and Mother Jones, Mass Shooting database at DataWorld.com.

Challenges we ran into

Developing an environment that would appropriately represent the gravity of all data available while providing an experience that would be bogged down by computer processing limitations.

Also careful thought was put into conveying information in a neutral and sensitive manner so that it would not alienate any participant.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Providing voice to information that is continually obfuscated by contrasting information, politics, and that is easily dismissed in a society where we are becoming increasingly desensitized to such realities. Also, our project won Best in Show for the hackathon, so that's awesome :D

What we learned

Spatial visualization, coupled with solid data, can reveal and accentuate concepts hard to perceive in graph form. Everyone knows we have a gun violence problem in the US; I don't think as many people are aware of the increasing frequency at which we're seeing incidents.

What's next for Shot Pattern

improvements to the database, visualization and interactivity (title screens, ergonomics / pause stop start etc).

https://imgur.com/3YQ0Qn5

Built With

• audio
• sdk
• steam-chamferzone-ammo-asset
• steamvr
• unity