Imagine traveling through our solar system and exploring Mars without ever leaving Lied Library.

UNLV's Dreamscape Learn makes that possible with R.2X Cosmic Expedition, a new immersive astronomy experience and the first Dreamscape Learn application developed by a multidisciplinary team of UNLV students.

Using full-body motion tracking in Dreamscape Learn’s FreeRoam pod, participants can interact with planets, travel to Mars, learn about its rocks and terrain, and test their astronomy knowledge along the way.

From an idea to an experience

R.2X Cosmic Expedition was born from brainstorming sessions, where the student team debated different ideas in an attempt to strike the right balance between education and entertainment 

Multiple ideas were considered and scrapped, including an escape-room-style experience.

“After lots of squabbling and days in our meeting room, we eventually came up with a space experience,” said Dunstan Mack, a fourth-year biochemistry major and programmer on the project. “We landed on a museum-like structure going through the solar system.”

“We decided that astronomy would be a really amazing application because we would be able to do something that we can’t normally do, like go out into outer space or touch a planet,” said Aundrea Frahm, director of immersive learning initiatives at UNLV.

The student team, made up of undergraduate and graduate students, includes programmers Mack, Isaac Morfinez-Solis, Noemi Magallanes, and Collin King; 3D artists Lyrissa Nicole and Juliano Guimaraes; and composer Liam Kornoely. Nicole also provided narration for the experience.

Frahm served as game director, Nicholas Abel was the project manager, David Ramos-Candelas provided audio mixing and effects, and Pulasthi “P.T.” Thennakoon provided additional support.

Their academic backgrounds range from biochemistry and computer science to art and entertainment engineering and design.

The finished experience includes five scenes. Users can interact with planets, observe how their movement changes over time and travel to Mars, where they explore the terrain and learn about different rocks before entering a quiz scene. The journey eventually brings them back to Earth.

Creating the Mars environment pushed Magallanes, a third-year computer science major, to think beyond programming.

“You have to consider visual effects, you have to consider your lighting, you have to actually consider the terrain,” Magallanes said. “I’m very proud of how it turned out.” 

Learning by building

Creating R.2X Cosmic Expedition gave students an opportunity to develop skills outside their individual areas of study.

Nicole, a second-year MFA art student and 3D artist on the project, began learning Blender, an open-source 3D creation software, about a year before joining the project and continued developing those skills while working with the team.

Because UNLV does not currently offer a game development major, Nicole had to learn much of the game development process as the project evolved.

“I’m pretty much learning this all on my own,” Nicole said. “ I’m figuring it out as we go.”

Students also learned to divide responsibilities, manage deadlines, troubleshoot technical problems, and communicate across a development team.

Morfinez-Solis, a fifth-year entertainment engineering and design major and lead programmer, said the experience taught him how to create project timelines, use tools such as Gantt charts, and distribute work among team members.

“It feels like we work on a professional content development team,” Mack said.

That collaboration also gave the students a sense of shared ownership over what they created.

“I’m most proud of how we all came together and built something from scratch,” Nicole said. “All of us are learning as we go, so just that we could make such an amazing project together is really awesome.”

The significance of R.2X Cosmic Expedition extends beyond its astronomy lessons. Frahm hopes the project will show other students what they can accomplish through immersive learning.

“It was really important to share what these students have created with our UNLV community,” Frahm said. “I wanted our students to know that other students who hadn’t really learned how to create a VR app built this themselves.”

The team is already imagining what could come next, from adding scenes to R.2X Cosmic Expedition to developing new classroom applications or mixed-reality experiences for standalone headsets.

For now, Mack hopes members of the UNLV community will step inside the Free Roam pod and experience what the students created.

“Come try it,” Mack said. “Come put the headset on and give it a really fair shot because you’re going to have your mind blown.”