Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) and Climate Change

COP26 kicked off in Glasgow on 31st October 2021 and as countries plan to tackle climate change, any decisions made could impact our daily lives significantly. Communicating the scale of climate change and its impact has been a challenge. The potential risk and negative impact have been amplified in contrast to mobilising public support and moving people to action. A clearer understanding about the complexities of climate change could enable people to see how policies and simple human behaviours can make a difference.

VR can be used to create immersive experiences that enables the public to experience climate change and its impact firsthand. It allows users to perceive with multiple senses as if they were in the real world. This very unique sense of being there is called psychological presence (Heeter, 1992, Slater and Wilbur, 1997). We are usually so detached from the world outside our four walls, and perceiving our environment in this state can build a lasting consciousness which could ultimately trigger decisions and action.

We have curated some of the best Virtual Reality projects that are trying to promote climate change awareness:

1 - Tree

This virtual-reality project transforms you into a tree in a rainforest. With your arms as branches and your body as the trunk, you’ll experience the tree’s growth from a seedling into its fullest form, and witness its fate firsthand.

2 - Greenland Melting

Greenland Melting is a virtual reality experience that introduces and brings educational awareness to the effects that the warming waters of the ocean have on glaciers, specifically in Greenland. Through this experience, you follow two NASA scientists who explain the process of studying why the glaciers in Greenland are melting. Gain access to NASA scientists as they conduct groundbreaking research into a transforming landscape with ramifications for the entire world.

3 - Virtual Dives by The Hydrous

The Hydrous harnesses ever-improving virtual reality and augmented reality, to develop and implement engaging science-based experiences so that they can take more people to places in the ocean that are totally underexplored, or previously inaccessible by certain communities or the whole of humankind. They create immersive, interactive experiences that promote science learning, empathy, and marine stewardship.

4 - This is Climate Change

In this expansive virtual reality docu-series from Participant Media and Condition One, journey to the far corners of the earth to discover the people and places being hit hardest by climate change.?This Is Climate Change?offers an immersive look into our new reality of catastrophic weather events that are displacing communities and transforming landscapes with alarming speed.

5 - Meet your Carbon Footprint

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) teamed up with Sony PlayStation platform 'Dreams' to create an immersive virtual reality experience about climate change.?The experience includes technological features that heighten the experience for viewers: three-dimensional graphics and ambisonic audio that positions sound around the user.?The experience portrays carbon footprint as an 18-meter-high orange ball of gas that leads viewers through different daily scenes including breakfast that then transforms into sea level rise.?The creators hope to challenge lack of awareness about the scale of individual emissions by allowing users to live a lifestyle compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, above which the threats of climate change become increasingly devastating.??

Please engage with us in the comments section and share any other interesting VR projects that are striving towards making a real impact in overcoming climate change.

ROVR Systems - https://www.rovr.systems