Meta-Earth: an extensible narrative-driven virtual earth visualization of the adverse effects of climate change in an immersive 3D virtual reality environment

Abstract

Virtual reality is a powerful platform to immerse users into environments that seem abstract and far away, and to also simulate the future. It advances a user’s understanding of the environment, by placing them directly in these foreign situations, thereby helping them to immediately have a better grasp of the situation and form strong memorable and emotional connections.

The effects of climate change have been shared widely around the world, and indeed the world at large is beginning to start taking corrective actions to reduce carbon emissions. Unfortunately, these pro-climate actions have just but only begun to move the world to a better place, imagery, and video have traditionally been humanity’s best tools to communicate the urgent need to improve the climate change situation, but virtual reality has the unique capability to go a few steps further.

Meta-Earth is created with the intent to foster greater awareness for the pressing issues of climate change. Meta-Earth allows users to better understand the immediacy of climate change issues by transporting users to virtual simulated situations to better understand how the earth would be impacted, if the climate continues to degrade without intervention.