ALTIUS Videogame

Customer’s request

ALTIUS (Atmospheric Limb Tracker for Investigation of the Upcoming Stratosphere) mission, foreseen to be launched in 2025, will monitor the distribution and evolution of stratospheric ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere. ALTIUS will provide support to services such as weather forecasting and monitor long-term trends in atmospheric ozone. To this purpose, the client (ESA) asked ReMedia to translate this information in an engaging web-based experience (a videogame).

The audience includes STEM students and young professionals interested in the specific sectors (engineers, physicians mathematics etc) and the scope of the project is to tap into the inherent human desire for achievement, competition, and enjoyment while learning while transferring scientific information related to satellite, data and Earth Observation. However, the game should also be suitable for engineers, scientists, and researchers who need to perform numerical computations and analyze data in the field of space engineering and science.

Our solution

The challenge for ReMedia was to transfer ALTIUS mission core activity into an interactive game. Gamification is the process of integrating game elements and principles into non-game contexts to enhance engagement, motivation, and participation. ReMedia introduced several elements to turn the learning process into a more enjoyable and compelling activity by incorporating elements commonly found in games:

• Points and Rewards: users earn points or rewards for completing tasks or achieving goals.
• Levels and Progression: users advance through levels as they accomplish more, creating a sense of progression.
• Competition: introducing competitive elements to encourage users to compete, fostering a sense of rivalry and motivation. In this sense, the user can see other users’ score and their nationalities.

The game focuses on learning the stellar occultation and satellite transmission according on the different altitude (from 380.0 nanometers wavelength up to 600.o nm). User can select the wavelength he or she wants to play with, and he/she consolidate the knowledge regarding the stellar occultation measurement. He or she can also select the star to play with by choosing among Sirius, Canopus, Arcturus, Rigel Kent or Vega.

Stellar occultation measurement works like this: a star’s light is measured above the atmosphere to create a reference spectrum. Then, the light is measured as it passes through the atmosphere to calculate horizontal transmission spectra. These spectra help begin the process of geophysical retrieval.

ALTIUS videogame input has been given from ESA in MATLAB (MATrix LABoratory), a high-performance programming language and environment specifically designed for numerical computing, data analysis, and visualization. Despite the MATLAB environment also supports the creation of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for interactive applications, the game has been programmed by ReMedia team in Javascript, and UX UI designers has delivered a graphically easy to use platform to ensure the final user’s involvement, interest and high performance during the game, ensuring a strong and rewarding learning process.