HELP - need assistance with game design for High School STEAM/STEAM competition

Good Morning,

I'm a program director for a local technical college in El Paso, Texas. We partner with many of the elementary, middle, and high schools in the area with several of our programs.

I was recently approached by one of our educational partners that introduced me to a young lady, 17 years old, currently at an Early College High School who is currently ranked number 2 in the state of Texas in Automated Robotics and is a 2 time national competitor for F1 in Schools.

She would like to take the idea of F1 in Schools and use Unity to build cars and race them.

There are a few more details to the project, but what I am looking for is any assistance in the way of volunteering time to assist these students. I am working with an educational partner that receives funding from the city of El Paso, and from other partner organizations.

Please feel free to reach out to me with if you are interested in volunteering or know of any available resources that would help us in this endeavor.

Thank you,

Ken Pivanick
kpivarnick@westerntech.edu

 

You're talking about building simulated cars and racing them in software, right? Or do you mean, somehow using Unity in the construction/operation of real, physical cars?

 

Yes, building the vehicles and racing them in the software, with the rubric for grading based on elements of the design that the students would bear the responsibility of, but the developers would assist. This would level the playing field for the schools that would be interested in participating in this kind of competition.

 

You are basically talking about creating a simulator that defines specifically what can be controlled/modified. So that's a big chunk of work right there before you even get to students being able to play it.

And a driving simulation that models the same types of things F1 does, is not going to be simple. We don't do things in games like measuring airflow and resistance beyond very simple approximations. Game physics is very basic, realistic is not what we are actually going for most of the time, so our tools reflect that.

Which isn't to say it's impossible to create or that some games don't do fairly realistic simulations. But you will be implementing all that from the ground up mostly.

 

You might try contacting the author of Edy's Vehicle Physics, which is one of the best vehicle simulation extensions for Unity. He's a good guy and if you explain it's for educating yoots, he just might find a way to contribute something.

 

Thanks for the reply, I do appreciate it, and for the reference to Edy's Vehicle Physics. I'll definitely check it out.

 

I think you spelled something wrong.