Events

Oregon State University (OSU) organizes an annual exposition for senior engineering students to demonstrate their senior capstone projects. Due to the pandemic, large social gatherings are not permitted. As a result, the 2020 OSU engineering exposition was held online through Zoom, the videotelephony and online chat software. The virtual engineering exposition held through Zoom was not interactive nor does it mimic the traditional in-person experience. This is where our project steps in, MMO Expo aims to improve the user experience of attending virtual expositions by creating an online exposition environment in the style of a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game. 

The concept of an MMO-style game is to have a large number of people on the same server where they can interact with each other in real-time. The purpose of the MMO Expo is to bring people together to have an interactive virtual exposition experience. With the new normality of having everything remote, we believe that having an online option for expositions will carry on beyond the pandemic and that our product will be of value even in the upcoming years. Our project also makes attending an exposition more accessible as anyone around the world can join the same online exposition. In addition to that, in-person expositions are costly as they require an avenue to host the event, hired staff, and equipment whereas the MMO Expo alternative greatly reduces the cost for organizations that want to host an exposition.

Our project flow resembles an MMO game whereby visitors can choose an avatar then explore a virtual world. A virtual world in our system is representative of the different rooms that are common in traditional in-person expositions. Visitors can choose which virtual world to visit from the virtual world lobby. Each virtual world is populated by booths staffed with exhibitor avatars with their respective projects. Each booth is customizable to each unique project in the sense that an image of a project poster can be uploaded to each individual booth. There is a global real-time chat functionality within each virtual world as well as a booth proximity chat functionality for each booth. There is a booth search functionality within each virtual world so that visitors can easily find and visit the booth that they are looking for. Visitors can visit the different virtual worlds by exiting their current virtual world and going back to the virtual world lobby.

Due to OSU youth safety and event policies, we had to temporarily turn off the global real-time chat and booth proximity chat functionality for the Virtual Engineering Expo.

The MMO Expo currently has a feature whereby the addition and modification of booths can be easily made by changing the contents of a JSON file. This feature enables the virtual worlds to be altered with ease. The goal for a future team is to replace the JSON files with an administrative website so that the input process is more secure and user-friendly. 

The MMO Expo currently supports up to 20 simultaneous players on the server due to our use of Photon's free networking service. The server limit can be increased by paying for a Photon Unity Package. Our project provides a starting point for future work on implementing a large-scale virtual exposition. 

Our project partner is instructor William Pfeil. Bill is an instructor for the OSU EECS Online Post-bacc Program. Bill has worked in the software industry for over 25 years on a diverse range of projects that include modeling, logistics, geospatial, law enforcement, device drivers, robotics, process control, streaming services, websites, and mobile apps and games.