Master Athlete
An educational VR experience designed to build empathy for older adults through immersive athletics.
Master Athlete is a VR application developed for sports science students to foster empathy and challenge preconceptions about older adults. Players embody either Alan or Mary as they compete in a senior athletics shot put competition, experiencing first-hand that older people are often more capable than students might assume.
As the lead developer, I built the experience in Unity targeting both PC VR (SteamVR) and Meta Quest standalone. A key technical challenge was implementing eye tracking and full-body tracking on the PC version to create a truly immersive embodiment experience, while also optimising the application to run smoothly on the Quest's mobile hardware. The project required close collaboration with sports science researchers to ensure the simulation accurately represented the physical experience while meeting the educational objectives.
As the lead developer, I built the experience in Unity targeting both PC VR (SteamVR) and Meta Quest standalone. A key technical challenge was implementing eye tracking and full-body tracking on the PC version to create a truly immersive embodiment experience, while also optimising the application to run smoothly on the Quest's mobile hardware. The project required close collaboration with sports science researchers to ensure the simulation accurately represented the physical experience while meeting the educational objectives.
Project Insights & Key Learnings
This project reinforced the importance of cross-platform optimisation—developing for both high-end PC VR with advanced tracking and standalone Quest hardware required careful architecture decisions from day one. Working closely with sports science researchers also highlighted how essential domain expert collaboration is when building educational simulations; their input ensured the experience was both technically impressive and pedagogically effective.
Development & Design
Swansea University