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Shift Culture VR

A VR dirt-bike safety prototype for B-360, a Baltimore youth STEM nonprofit. It had to run on cheap phone-based VR and be comfortable for first-time users. I built the technical side: the VR interaction flow, the riding feel and the comfort tuning.

The riding view we tuned for readability, obstacle awareness and comfort.
My role
Technical implementation, VR interaction flow, gameplay feel and comfort testing
Team
Zefran Jehle and Lewis Plested, in Dr. Elka Cahn's community game-design class
Client
B-360, a Baltimore youth STEM nonprofit
Result
Reviewed in person with B-360; testers reported no motion sickness during the session

The brief

The University of Baltimore newsroom featured the class collaboration on January 30, 2026. Our prototype had to reflect B-360's mission, run on affordable mobile VR, and make sense in a workshop.

  • Affordable hardware

    Built for Google Cardboard-style mobile VR, not expensive headsets, so it could run in real workshops.

  • Comfort first

    Camera behaviour, movement and pacing tuned to reduce sickness for people trying VR for the first time.

  • Useful to the client

    The goal was a prototype B-360 could evaluate for its workshops and outreach, not a class demo.
B-360 riders. Photo: University of Baltimore newsroom.

The prototype

The player loop:

  • Inspect a dirt bike in a workshop to learn its parts.
  • Answer short quiz prompts on safety and bike knowledge.
  • Test-ride the bike in first person.
The menu and onboarding keep first-time players oriented before the workshop and riding sections.
The low-cost phone headset we designed for.
Development and team testing.

How we worked:

  • Regular class critiques and team check-ins kept the scope under control.
  • Desktop and mobile test loops caught comfort, clarity and stability problems early.
  • We kept revising the UI, onboarding and interactions so first-time users could follow along.

Outcome

We showed B-360 a working prototype at our final in-person meeting and watched them play it. Nobody reported motion sickness, which mattered a lot for a low-cost phone VR build, and the session showed how the project could fit real workshops.

The semester ended before the final cross-platform version was finished. In March 2026, Zefran and I planned to keep developing it through summer 2026, aiming for a cleaner build on PC, Android phones and Meta Quest with better onboarding and polish.

It taught me to judge VR decisions by usefulness, comfort and access rather than novelty, and what working with a real client is like.

Community volunteering connected to the outreach side of the project.