Client
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Game Design
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3D Animation
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Engineering
Draper PNT: Navigate to an Asteroid
Navigate to an Asteroid is an interactive gesture-controlled game developed for Draper's Engineering Possibilities 2018 trade exhibition. Built in Unity with Xbox Kinect, the experience lets players use their body to pilot a spacecraft, select navigation constellations, and land on an asteroid — all powered by real Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) technology developed at Draper. I led the full visual pipeline, collaborating with Draper's PNT engineering team to bring the experience to life for a live trade show audience.
The Challenge
Making cutting-edge spacecraft navigation technology understandable — and playable — for a live trade show audience.
Draper's PNT technology is complex, highly technical, and not easily communicated through static displays or printed materials. The exhibit needed something that could stop people on a trade show floor, explain the technology intuitively, and leave a lasting impression — all within a live environment where the experience had to work flawlessly every single time. With engineers focused on system integration and a tight deadline driving toward opening day, the visual pipeline needed to be built fast, optimized for real-time performance, and polished enough to represent Draper at the highest level.
The Approach
Engineers built the system. I built everything the audience saw.
Working alongside Draper's PNT engineering team, I led the full visual pipeline for the experience — developing all 3D assets, designing the UI and motion elements, and implementing transitions and supporting animations to ensure a cohesive and intuitive user experience. Every visual element was built with the live exhibit environment in mind: clear, responsive, and visually consistent under trade show conditions.
Real-time performance optimization was central to the work. Assets were developed and refined specifically for Unity's real-time pipeline, balancing visual quality against the performance demands of a gesture-controlled live experience. The Kinect integration required close collaboration with engineers to ensure the visual feedback responded accurately and smoothly to player movement — leaning left or right to steer, raising fingers to select constellations, and opening a hand to scan and land.
As the deadline approached, the final push focused on polish — tightening transitions, refining visual consistency, and ensuring the full experience was trade show ready in time for opening day.
The Impact
A live interactive experience that turned complex spacecraft navigation science into something anyone could play.
Navigate to an Asteroid debuted at Draper's Engineering Possibilities 2018 exhibition, giving trade show attendees a hands-on way to engage with PNT technology through gesture-controlled gameplay. The experience demonstrated how real-time Unity development, thoughtful UI design, and close engineer collaboration can translate highly technical subject matter into an accessible and engaging interactive format — and how visual polish is what separates a functional prototype from a production-ready exhibit piece.
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