The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. Among the many events hosted by the IEEE is their annual GameSIG competition.
When we hosted the VR Battleship game with the special needs class at our school, we realized that many special needs students do not have developed fine motor skills. Because of this, students were unable to use the virtual controller that we had developed to play the game. It was too complicated, and the movements required to use it were too meticulous.
I worked with the computer science club at my school to develop a VR game called “Escaping Atlantis” that special needs students who have difficulty coordinating hand movements can play. The head movements in VR are used to control the player’s movement and aim. These are intuitive and much easier for students who do not have developed fine motor skills. All the player has to do is click on the input trigger to shoot.
Here is the promotional video of “Escaping Atlantis” that was submitted to be evaluated by judges. Many things were changed in the game afterwards. The shark movement was fixed, and the realistic gun was replaced with an animated, more kid friendly ray gun.
We competed against around 50 other intercollegiate teams like the computer science departments at Chapman and UCI. We were selected as the first ever high school finalists in the competition.
