Parallax will be a learning experience that combines traditional teaching methods with virtual reality supplements to enhance students’ understanding of traditionally taught astronomy concepts. Lecture order and content is based upon the California Department of Education’s standards for 5th-12th graders’ knowledge of astronomy. Lectures will be followed by virtual reality sessions which aim to grant students additional intuition on various topics related to astronomy taking advantage of virtual reality’s inherent interactivity and capability to convey perspective.

Currently, we've finished up interplanetary transportation and filled the planets with objects, in addition to a scale and a balance, to allow students to experiment with the differences between various planets' gravities. To contrast each planet from Earth, we've also included an "Earthbox" on each planet to allow students to see how Earth's gravity would affect the object. We've taken a version with these capabilities and, in conjunction with a lesson on the scientific method, tested our VR supplement in a classroom environment.

From our test, we learned that we've successfully gamified the education of astronomical concepts, but we haven't effectively restricted students well enough in our test environments. Over the next few months, we aim to more effectively railroad students with a narrator, HUD, and tighter restrictions on what they can do overall. Additionally, we desire to implement networking to allow multiple students to be learning at once in the same, teacher-operated learning environment. Hopefully, these additional measures will allow our lectures to more effectively teach students, something we hope to measure in the future via interactive quizzes in the VR itself.