MSU Museum

Collaboration

Learn about the MSU Museum

MSU Grand Reopening: 1/14/2026 3:30-7:00

MSU Museum Location:

409 West Circle Drive, East Lansing, Michigan, 48824

Staff Directory

Serious Game and MSU Museum Collaboration Overview:

The MSU Museum team will give a brief overview of museum highlights and capabilities that they would like to feature and potential audiences you want to reach or cater to.

We will have four meetings held on-site in the MSU Museum ideally during Professor Bonner's Wednesday 3-5pm class time. These are still to be determined as the Museum is just reopening.

Potential Calendar of Events with the Museum

1. Week 3 (Jan. 28): 3:00pm meet at the museum Introduction to the space and partner org needs (get a “client brief” on needs/topics games could highlight)
2. Week 6 (Feb. 18): Team Pitches. Students have formed into teams and will present initial design ideas/game pitches to each other and museum staff, then receive questions and feedback on their ideas before moving forward
3. Week 12 (April 1): Prototype Session. Students bring game prototypes to museum space for hands-on gameplay testing. We have historically partnered with Waverly High School as well, bringing in about 20 of their game design students to serve as playtesters. We are working to build this collaboration or another collaboration such as Genessee Career Institute who has a Game Design Program.
4. Exam Week (Week of April 27, day/time more flexible): Showcase. Students show off final games in museum space. Waverly students, community members, and faculty/family/friends are invited to playtest and celebrate.

Science on a Sphere

The Museum staff work directly with faculty to generate and distribute geophysical, environmental, and cultural data visualizations through the innovative Science On a Sphere (SOS) platform, which features a six-foot diameter immersive visualization display. Additionally, the SOS system was utilized for teaching, with over 500 students creating custom content for the system during classes.

Letter from Carrie:

Thanks to all of you for meeting at the Museum today, it was helpful to talk through some Science On a Sphere logistics as you all proceed with your project. Below are links to some specific NOAA SOS pages that I think will have particularly helpful information for you.

Visual Playlist Editor Manual - Science On a Sphere (VPLE is the part of the system that puts together the video/image/audio/PIPs together into one dataset)

Content Creation Guidelines - Science On a Sphere (Info about file sizes and formats)

Public Kiosk Manual - Science On a Sphere (Most of this you can probably skip over, but if you're curious or want a reminder of the kiosk layout)

Datasets Manual - Science On a Sphere (mainly helpful for info on using PIPs)

Also, I looked back at some old emails and I believe if my records are correct, the kiosk icon for the entire group of datasets (displayed on the left-hand side of the kiosk) is an image size of 500 x 417.

I'm happy to help you all and do some content testing on the Sphere as needed, I just ask that you communicate needs with me as soon as possible!

If there's any other information I can help track down for you or if can answer any questions that come up as you work, feel free to email me.

Best, Carrie

Susan’s notes science on the sphere conversation

Layers
Base layer
Projector
Globe
Room

Pictures in pictures- pips

4 pips
One can move with the movement
One can stay static with the viewer
Color bars
NOAA science on the sphere
Video of a tornado moving through a community use the middle points for anything that has important elements.
Think about text going in the middle half.
Software changes the projection 2/1 aspect ratio.
Make sure the image is looped on the left and right seems.
Audio files.
Movie file is the audio file File types see the Noah site
H264 is a no.
She can change the codec though
We should aim at the video codec she wants
We give her the files
She saves as a data set
Limit to layers =________
Limit to pips =________
We set up a Google Drive
Give her the rectangle image
That goes to the data set
Circle says start Video
into Scenario
1 14 circles on the bottom - but there are also some with more.