A virtual reality educational experience for Ocean Era that teaches people about their groundbreaking off-shore seaweed farm system. **Client:** Ocean Era / ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit **Platform:** Meta Quest 2 **Tools & Tech:** Unity, Timeline, ElevenLabs, custom shaders, baked lighting, C# scripting **Role:** Solo Developer (Design, Programming, Art Integration, Optimization)  ### Overview The _Ocean Era VR Experience_ is a fully immersive virtual reality application developed for the 2024 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit. Designed to showcase Ocean Era’s groundbreaking offshore seaweed farm prototype, the experience allowed attendees to explore and understand the environmental, structural, and logistical aspects of open-ocean aquaculture in an engaging and intuitive way. Built entirely for the Meta Quest 2, the project was developed solo from the ground up using Unity. Unity Timeline was leveraged to precisely choreograph environmental events, narration, and transitions across the experience. Voiceovers were generated and edited using ElevenLabs for a natural, clear delivery. All shaders were custom-built to accommodate the specific needs of a stylized underwater environment, including dynamic wave surfaces, refracted lighting, and interactive materials for seaweed and infrastructure. The experience featured: - **Holographic Preview Mode**: Users first encounter a scaled-down, floating hologram of the seaweed farm system that orients and educates them before they are placed at full scale within the real-time ocean simulation. - **Dynamic Ocean Environment**: Includes animated wave surfaces, underwater caustics, and shifting light rays to mimic real-world ocean conditions. - **An above-and-below water transition**, immersing users in a lifelike oceanic environment. - **Dynamic wave motion and real-time environmental feedback**, such as wind and lighting cues. - **Interactive educational UI overlays**, synchronized with narration and triggered by user gaze. - **A guided narrative tour** explaining the function and benefits of the seaweed farm system. - **Optimized for Standalone VR**: The entire experience was tailored for Quest 2, utilizing GPU-friendly lighting, LOD systems, and performance-first shader design. Performance was heavily optimized to run smoothly on the Quest 2, including GPU-friendly baked lighting, level-of-detail models, and lightweight post-processing. The project was delivered on time for the summit and presented to an audience of scientists, policy-makers, and industry leaders, earning positive feedback for both its technical execution and educational clarity. ### Screenshots