Plastic Seas | Devpost

Inspiration

Every year, 19-23 million tonnes of plastic waste leak into our rivers, lakes, and oceans, devastating ecosystems and communities worldwide. Inspired by places without access to potable drinking water, like the Dominican Republic and Flint, Michigan, this experience uses narrative storytelling, dark humor, and interactivity to energize viewers to take action against plastic pollution.

What it does

Plastic pollution is a critical issue affecting our environment, marine life, and our health. “Plastic Seas” encourages users to take an active role against this problem by examining their plastic waste use in order to build more sustainable habits. In this experience, users need to recycle plastic waste that has overtaken the environment using game mechanics.

How we built it

We used Unity's VR Template as a starting point, and we created 5 scenes in Unity and spliced them together to create a narrative using a variety of scripts and open source assets. The voice over for Paul was performed by MaryAnn, edited using ElevenLabs and implemented in key scenes. We also used Post Processing to apply filters and effects to the final product.

Challenges we ran into

We initially wanted to build the app for the Snap Spectacles but the limited field of view did not work for our concept, so we pivoted to the Meta Quest 3. We ran into a few technical challenges as well, such as Github merge issues. Initially, we wanted to implement object detection using an ML model at the start of the game. We wanted the application to detect a plastic bottle in the player's hand, bringing it to life. However, we quickly realized that we had to limit our scope for this hackathon.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We developed a strong pitch to fundraise and build Plastic Seas as our first environmentally-focused VR app. We created a cute prototype for our main character, Paul.

What we learned

We learned the importance of building a practical go-to-market strategy and developing a coherent and punchy pitch. We also learned the importance of team collaboration during this process, as it was the first time we were all working together.

What's next for Plastic Seas

For our next steps, we will further build out the scenes of the prototype. We will port the current version from VR into the MR format, and apply for grants to continue the development of the app.