An interactive installation for the exploration of the forest ground and its living organisms.

Located at the science center of Proença-a-Nova, Portugal

Design and code: Tiago Serra
Modeling and animation: André Caetano

Specs:
A modified Sauerbraten 3D engine was used for the immersive environment. Three Sharp GP2D12 IR sensors are responsible for the user interaction and the Parapin Linux userland library was used for parallel port communication. The Linux kernel was patched with the Tickless kernel patch since I needed low-latency sensor communication: "the high-res timers feature (CONFIG_HIGH_RES_TIMERS) enables POSIX timers and nanosleep() to be as accurate as the hardware allows (around 1usec on typical hardware). This feature is transparent - if enabled it just makes these timers much more accurate than the current HZ resolution."

This project was done in a 2 month period between February and May 2007.

Design considerations:
Needed to be fun, educational and resilient enough to handle lots of kids fighting for it ;)