Imagine if we could experience the consequences of today’s actions one hundred years into the future. The Climate Change Forecaster co-developed with Chad Mullvin at American University’s Game Lab, is a unity-based VR prototype for HTC and Oculus Rift headsets that leverages real forecasting data to simulate climate and weather conditions likely to be experienced decades in the future, depending on what we do or not do to reduce our impact and carbon footprint in the Earth’s environment.

The prototype uses MapBox to build a 3D map of any available landscape or city and uses Weather Maker to simulate the weather conditions. In this VR implementation of the prototype, the user stands on a busy street inside a life-size reconstruction of Lower Manhattan in NYC, which might present flooding or severe weather more frequently in a 100 years, depending on the user’s choices in today’s world.