Interactive educational game based upon underwater acoustic raytracing and echolocation.
Sperm whales feed on giant squids, which they detect with sound (“clicks"). The goal of the game is to help the sperm whale get as many squids as possible in a limited amount of time and with limited number of trials (clicks), while refraction is bending the ray trajectories making it hard to aim at the target.
By touching the whale, it produces clicks which propagate along curved rays and eventually encounter/detect squids. The form of the rays depends on the location and orientation of the whale as well as on the ocean environment (sound-speed profile).
Besides initiating clicks the user can at any time change the direction of motion of the whale or select a different sea environment from the world map.
Numerical calculations are performed in real time using optimized propagation codes.