Interactive VR Exhibition : Why Must We Make it All Burn?

The UN Sustainable Development Goal “Life on Land” is addressing critical concern in environmental sciences about the growing threats of desertification and land degradation from wildfires and other natural disasters. Virtual Reality can play a significant role in planning and displaying a resolution to these issues. Currently, there is a lack of successful real-time interactive models to aid natural disaster management, often leading to unpredicted outbreaks, causing unprepared individuals and citizens to be impacted. Virtual Reality can aid better preparation methods regarding unpredictable wildfires, allowing for all to be ready for contributing to resolutions. To address these concerns, I designed the virtual reality project “Why Must We Make it All Burn?” with the use of 3D typography and hypertext, challenging viewers to confront the human-driven causes of environmental destruction and prompts a critical examination of our role in global ecological crises. Through sketching, storyboarding, creative coding, 3D modeling, design, programming the interactions, special effects, spatial audio, and final testing, this project was developed using Unity Game Engine and C# programming language. The project was exhibited in the CAVE2 VR environment [1], in the University of Illinois, Chicago. The exhibition was attended by 25 people. The audience was immersed in the land of deforestation, among the endless fields of trunks and trees consumed by flames, was an edifying immersive experience for the public. The project motivated my audience to learn more about deforestation and environmental protection. I successfully designed and developed an immersive project that uses Virtual Reality to contribute to environmental engineering, as well as including 3D models of symbolic typography to immerse the audience more. This work will be featured in a special CAVE2 VR exhibition proposed for the Hypertext 2025 Conference, where participants can navigate an interactive VR environment connecting scenes of fire and deforestation through hypertextual typographies.