Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Space Jump Android App released

Some of you know that over the last few months, a group of 6 students (Matt Leahy, Matt Duce, August Karbowski, Zach Myers, Matt Plazzetti, Will Casio) and I had been working on an Android App called Space Jump, which is based on the Red Bull Stratos event of October 2012, where Felix Baumgartner free falls from over 128,000 above the Earth's surface.
The purpose of the app is to accurately educate the general public on the actual events of the free-fall from the launch of the capsule, to all 37 check list items Felix has to maintain to assure a steady ascent and decent, all the way down to the very dangerous sky dive.  Since there had not been any educational material out there in the form of an application/game/simulation, I thought this would be the best opportunity to make one.  One could sit through hours of video learning about the Stratos event, but most will probably not partake in that.  The application, we made takes roughly 10 minutes to play through (depending on skill level) and will teach a player every important element they need to know.  The application as mentioned above is very accurate, we not only used every real life check list, but all the heads up display elements are exactly the same as they were on TV during the event, as well as camera angles and actual voices by Felix and Mission Control.  We also decided to make the gameplay itself fairly simple by use of gestures during the checklist phase and accelerometer during the falling phase.  The difficulty level makes the simulation appropriate to players of all ages, young or old.
I have released the simulation for free download off my website.  It is a .APK which will only work on Android devices.  We have built it at a low grade for compatibility reasons, so any Android user with version 2.3 or above should not have a problem running the simulation on their device.  The simulation is ad-free and not officially up in any markets because we are not looking to make money off of this product, it is purely for educational purposes.  We are not working with or for Red Bull in any way, they are in no way affiliated with the project.
Below is a video of the simulation... Below that is a link to the .apk download.

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