Applications and 3D graphics for the space museum in Grozny

About the project

The task

We received the exhibition concept and the installation scripts ready-made. Our job was to turn them into something visitors can actually use.

“Cosmonaut Training Centre” is a model with a screen: the visitor chooses a stage of training and sees how cosmonauts are trained and how people live in zero gravity.

“The Solar System” is a dome. In normal mode it offers a panoramic view of the city. The guide switches on the glass dimming, the Sun is projected onto the dome, and planets with labels appear as the talk goes on. Touch panels by the barrier let visitors open information about the planets themselves.

What we did

“Cosmonaut Training Centre”

An application for the model. The start screen reads “Train at the cosmonaut training centre”, followed by a choice of stage: “Centrifuge”, “Hydrolab”, “Zero-gravity training aircraft”, “Life on the International Space Station” and “General training scenario”. The camera moves to the relevant part of the 3D version of the model — the centrifuge, the hydrolab pool, the aircraft, the station — with cards alongside: why this stage is needed, what tests the cosmonaut goes through, facts. A button with a paw calls up the cosmonaut dog with an interesting fact.

“The Solar System”

Animated scenes for the dome projection and an application for the touch panels. Fifteen objects: the Sun, eight planets from Mercury to Neptune and six moons — the Moon, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Titan and Enceladus. The selected object is shown on the dome, and the panel displays a card with the object type and facts about it. The 3D models of the planets and moons and their animation were made by us.

The quiz “Test your knowledge of space!”

Launched from the same panel: statements about how the Solar System works. True — swipe right, false — swipe left. Each answer is followed by an explanation, and at the end come the number of correct answers and the cosmonaut dog.

The cosmonaut dog

A robot dog in a spacesuit bearing the flags of Russia and Chechnya. We modelled and textured the character and made its animations: flying, waiting, greeting visitors, entering the frame and leaving it.

How it is built

Both applications are written in Unity.

Under the technical specification, the applications run on Windows in full-screen mode and without internet access — all materials are stored locally; the dome projection is blended and synchronised with “The Solar System” application; in “Cosmonaut Training Centre” the application controls the LED lighting of the model; application settings are changed through a web interface.

Result