(Representational/Reuters Photo)A WAR game based on the Battle of Kurukshetra depicted in the epic Mahabharata will be showcased at the ‘Facebook School of Innovation’s Virtual Reality Demo Day’ in Bengaluru on Saturday. A final-year student of College of Engineering, Prathmesh Mane, has developed the prototype that makes players active participants in the battle.
Mane will be up against nine national teams, including Bengaluru, Meerut, Pilani, Kozhikode, Kottayam and Ghaziabad, in a contest of emerging technologies’ products that will be attended by industry leaders, vice-chancellors and state start-up missions.
Under the Facebook School of Innovation Programme, co-created by the social media giant and Startup Village Collective, a digital incubator for college entrepreneurs, 21 students from across India will exhibit prototypes of innovative products that have been fashioned from VR. A panel of an industry expert and Facebook India team will select the best out of top 10 teams as the winner of ‘India VR Day’.
Mane’s game, ‘Kurukshetra VR’, was selected from a pool of 2,000 applications from 25 states. Mentored by industry expert Shubham Agarwal, the game allows the user to choose a character from either Kauravas or Pandavas. Each character boasts of expertise in one war weapon, such as Arjuna is the master of archery while Duryodhan is a mighty mace warrior. As the game begins, the VR player can witness opponents advancing menacingly who then have to be eliminated. In the end, the player and the opponent have to face each other in a one-on-one battle and fight till one of them runs out of health.
Mane, in a statement released on Thursday, said, “The Mahabharata has always fascinated me for its characters and philosophy, both of which are inspiring. The VR technology has helped me turn it into an innovative war game.”
As part of the preparation for the demonstration, participants underwent a six-month developer-training programme mentored by well-known experts in emerging technologies.
The purpose of the VR programme, built in collaboration with industry partners, Scapic and Unity, is to impart key skills to build world-class VR prototypes while enabling students to build their own start-up or pursue higher education in areas of emerging technologies.
