Saving the Polar Bears: A Collaborative VR Storytelling Experience Enhanced by Multi-scale and Multi-view WiM Designs
Lei Zhang, Mason Prather, Devon Haynes, Feiyu Lu, Ying Chen, Joy Li · 2025
The rapid loss of Arctic Sea ice has cascading impacts across environmental, ecological, and human systems, demonstrating the interconnected nature of global climate processes. Future climate engineering technologies have great potential to slow down the melting of Arctic Sea ice, yet few people are familiar with them. In this contest, we present a solution that utilizes the virtualness of VR experience to create a rapid cause and effect visualization in virtual environment (VE) for the application of the future climate engineering technologies. This educational experience features an engaging polar bear rescue storyline, gameplay mechanics, and two novel collaborative, adaptive zoom world-in-miniature 3D UIs that facilitate large-scale VE wayfinding, navigation, and task fulfillment.