Orbital Battleship: A Multiplayer Guessing Game in Immersive Virtual Reality

Authors: Anastasia Rychkova, Alexey Korotkikh, Andrey Mironov, Artem Smolin,, Kurushkin M.V.

Abstract

Orbital Battleship, published in 2016 in this Journal, is a hands-on competitive exercise which has been shown to be an efficient tool to reinforce the knowledge of the atomic structure. We decided to give it a more futuristic look and are presenting VR Orbital Battleship, a completely immersive collaborative experience which, in contrast to the pen-and-paper version, guarantees that students are unable to fill in an erroneous electron configuration thanks to the special control elements of the game. Hence, they are motivated to do their best in order to apply Madelung’s rule and Hund’s rule right to be able to start the game. The game design makes full use of what the immersive virtual reality has to offer: the headset completely immerses the player in the process of the game, resulting in less distraction compared to the classic version. Furthermore, the game’s design is user-friendly and intuitive, and thus, it adds to the overall immersive experience. The game is recommended for use as an interactive addition to school and university classes that are dedicated to the atomic structure. VR Orbital Battleship is available for free worldwide in both a portable mobile platform (Oculus Go) and a PC version by downloading the game (see the Supporting Information of this paper).

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00866

Read full: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00866

Abstract Image