Learn basic Physics in a Rube Goldberg VR game

Rube Goldberg VR allows children to experience Rube Goldberg Machine in a more immersive approach and learn about the physics facts while playing the game.

In this application, the users will be surrounded by different devices in VR and are able to play it, pause it, or open a pop-up window in the game. It allows them to learn about what is happening in Rube Goldberg machine, and the users could understand the physics facts more easily as they can actually see the phenomenon.

About the game

The application also allows users to experience the game from different point of views. Traditionally, we could only watch the Rube Goldberg machine from a third person perspective.

However, in this application the users could actually “be part of the machine”. For example, instead of watching a ball triggered by the devices in the machine, the user could enjoy the game from a first-person perspective (as if they were the ball), and see all the Physics facts at the same time. It makes the game more interesting and enable the users to understand Physics phenomenon seamlessly.

Learning goals for our players

Using vibration pattern as a platform to understand the environment

Memorizing the Physics phenomenon from textbook could be a little troublesome for children as they could not really see the intangible facts. We would like to use Rube Goldberg machine as a starting point to allow the users learning through playing.

Rube Goldberg VR visualizes different physics concepts such as gravity and velocity, the users could learn about the physics facts that happen in Rube Goldberg machine by interact with the game objects. For instance, if you pause it when the ball is dropping, you will be seeing something like "Gravitational Potential Energy, E=mgh" in the pop-up window.

Design & prototype

Result and lessons learned

This is the first time that I learned Unity as well as code in C#. It's an interesting experience. However, designing a game is way more complicated than I thought it would be, as I need to focus on not just the technical aspects but also the users' feelings and experience in the game.

I did encounter the "motion sickness" problem when I created the first version of the game. And I spent time testing with multiple users to solve the problem. Overall, this project taught me the importance of "user-centric" and definitely help me a lot while working on other projects.