High-Level Project Summary
James Webb Odyssey is a video game that will help people learn about the incredible capabilities of the James Webb telescope. The scenarios presented by each telescope will inspire the player to explore space and make discoveries of celestial bodies. Players will learn in a way that each discovery will present them with a news story and image of what they explored in a fun way in all of the scenarios. James Webb Odyssey is important because it presents information about telescopes in a real news way that will pique children's interest.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
James Webb Odyssey allows the player to explore the solar system and position himself over a planet or constellation that has already been discovered and zoom in for a closer look.
The game shows you that when you position on any celestial body on the map a pop-up window opens which contains information about that celestial body and comparative images of the James Webb Telescope and Hubble to show the amazing capabilities of the James Webb.
After that, the game allows the user the possibility to learn more about that information by clicking on the celestial body, which will take you to the NASA page so you can read more about its information in detail.
The benefits of the video game are that people can have fun exploring the map to discover the information about the celestial bodies and learn how the James Webb Telescope captured the image and its capabilities that helped it capture the image. We identified that people get bored reading a lot of information which helped us to simplify it and if they were interested then go over the more detailed information by clicking on the celestial body.
We developed this prototype using Python, and the open source resource Ursina Engine, the images that were used for the game were consulted on the NASA website as well as the information.
Space Agency Data
The data offered by NASA regarding the James Webb telescope on the discoveries in their explorations and the capabilities it has, the information obtained for both the James Webb telescope and the Hubble, Chandra and WISE provided us with valuable information on the capabilities contained in each telescope and differentiate the improvements over time.
We used this information for the development of the video game, so that we present them as news in pop-up windows that appear when the telescope is positioned over the discoveries, so that the player does not get bored of reading and is not overloaded with information.
An example the data on when the James Webb Telescope was launched was used throughout the site to show the image it captured and information on when it did so and what capability helped capture the image Better resolution, longer range etc.
Hackathon Journey
Our experience at Space Apps was really impressive as it was the first time each of us had participated in an event of this type. We learned that there are numerous telescopes that have made wonderful discoveries and that the James Webb Telescope is one of the largest and most complex telescopes in existence, and that it has incredible capabilities that help it capture what is hiding in space that we have yet to discover. What inspired us to select the challenge was that having the opportunity to develop something for people to know what is going on in the world and in space and what is being done to know what is outside the planet, we considered it an opportunity for them to see what has been discovered and how it was done.
The best way to learn is to play, so we prototyped a fun and, most importantly informative game for people. Every challenge or setback was solved as what we are a team, we never worked alone in the tasks to be developed, we always supported each other to do it fast because several minds work better than one.
References
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/2319/first-image-of-a-black-hole/
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/webb/main/index.html
https://giventofly.github.io/pixelit/
https://github.com/pokepetter/ursina.git
https://www.nationalgeographicla.com/ciencia/2021/12/se-lanzo-el-telescopio-espacial-james-webb-el-mas-potente-de-la-historia
Tags
#Prototype #Kids #JamesWebb #Python