Experience Curiosity is an interactive web application developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to celebrate the third anniversary of the Curiosity rover landing on Mars. [1] This 3D serious game [2] makes it possible to operate the rover, control its cameras and the robotic arm and reproduces some of the prominent events of the Mars Science Laboratory mission. [3] [4] The application was presented at the beginning of the WebGL section at SIGGRAPH 2015. [5]
According to Brian Kumanchik, the lead and art director behind the project, the development team used exclusively open-source software including Blender and GIMP for creating 3D content, particularly due to public accessibility of open source formats. The Blend4Web framework was chosen as a 3D engine which is integrated with Blender, includes a physics engine and provides rendering in mobile browsers. [6] In 2018, the application was ported to Verge3D framework. [7]
Experience Curiosity won the Webby Award as the best "Government & Civil Innovation" website of 2016. [8] [9] The 5-word speech at the award ceremony was Rockin' and Rovin' on Mars, voiced by NASA's representative Brian Kumanchik. [10]