Outreach Lectures

in virtual worlds and Virtual Reality

Sign-up for the lectures on Outschool.com.

Or contact us directly at book@omniscope.org to book a private lecture for your class, learning group, or birthday party.

We believe that at this point of time the virtual worlds can improve multiple aspects of science communication:

  • Accessibility for students. There are multiple factors that limit accessibility and can be solved by virtual worlds:

    • geographical — planetariums are sparse and completely inaccessible from rural areas,

    • financial — reduced logistical costs remove the financial constraints for many disadvantaged schools and communities,

    • medical — immobile and hospitalized people can access the virtual worlds from anywhere with no physical contact with other people.

  • Accessibility for scientists. The reduced logistics time and cost allows them to be more involved in outreach activities.

  • Additional media for science communication. By adapting virtual for science communication we create an additional space for science communicators to reach their audience; thus, it creates new ways to generate income.

Virtual Planetarium show about Hayabusa2 mission

In this experience you share the virtual space with the lecturer and other attendees. The topic is Haybausa2 mission (wikipedia) launched by JAXA in 2018 and scheduled to return later this year. The scope of the show covers the technical side of the mission and about more cultural aspects. Three different locations are used to emerge the visitors into the journey of the spacecraft from Earth to asteroid Ryugu and back to Earth.

AGORA

We recreated a real space from Earth Life Science Institute (ELSI, Tokyo Institute of Technology). We start our lecture from this to get used to the VR.

Urashima

Then, we jump into the fairy tale land and talk about story of Urashima Taro. The asteroid visited by Hayabusa2 spacecraft was named after the underwater palace from this story.

Ryugu

Finally, we move to the surface of the asteroid recreated from the real data. We explore its features and talk about the formation of this kind of objects in our Solar system.

If you encounter problems while exploring the environment, check out this FAQ.

We adopt Mozilla Hubs for giving remote outreach lectures, and develop custom environments and assets. Our plans include to further customize Hubs platform to implement some interactions that are not currently available.

For any kinds on inquiries and for signing up for beta testing: hello@omniscope.org

We would like to collaborate with researchers from all disciplines on creating and promoting outreach lectures in virtual worlds.