VR Space Game – Tour De Psyche

INSTITUTION

Pennsylvania State University (PSU)

CLASS

Platinum Class (2025 – 2026)

STUDENT TEAM

ACADEMIC GUIDANCE

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Tour de Psyche is a virtual reality (VR) educational experience developed in Unity 6 and Blender 4.5 LTS, designed to inspire public interest in the NASA Psyche mission. Designed for audiences aged 9 to 40, the project leverages a high-fidelity Blender-to-Unity pipeline to simulate the exploration of a metal-rich, “M-type” asteroid. The gameplay takes users from a NASA laboratory to a deep-space navigation sequence, culminating in an Asteroid-Dodging Minigame and a high-detail scan of 16 Psyche. To ensure a stable 72–90 FPS on Meta Quest hardware, the project utilizes a high-to-low poly baking workflow and procedural topography engineering in Blender. Developed using a Vertical Slice Architecture, the project integrates complex design patterns—such as Object Pooling and Observer—to maintain performance and scalability. The result is a three-minute immersive experience that demonstrates VR’s potential as a premier tool for scientific education and public engagement.

 

This work was created in partial fulfillment of the Pennsylvania State University Capstone Course “CMPSC 484” and “SWENG 480.” The work is a result of the Psyche Student Collaborations component of NASA’s Psyche Mission (https://psyche.ssl.berkeley.edu). “Psyche: A Journey to a Metal World” [Contract number NNM16AA09C] is part of the NASA Discovery Program mission to solar system targets. Trade names and trademarks of ASU and NASA are used in this work for identification only. Their usage does not constitute an official endorsement, either expressed or implied, by Arizona State University or National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of ASU or NASA.