Project Eagle

For the World War II operation, see Eagle Project. For the Boy Scouts of America activity, see Eagle Scout Service Project.

Project Eagle is an interactive art demo of a colony on Mars, developed by Blackbird Interactive in collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.^[1] It was released on Steam on 27 November 2018, in honor of the successful InSight landing.

Project Eagle
Developer(s)	Blackbird Interactive
Composer(s)	Paul Ruskay
Release	27 November 2018

Production

Project Eagle was built in the Unity (Game Engine) and utilizes design elements similar to that of the RTS game Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, including the sensors manager view and camera systems.

The Martian terrain was generated using radar data from NASA's HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.^[2]

Project Eagle is set in 2117 in a hypothetical future after the first human colonists arrive on Mars in the year 2034 ^[3][4] The fictional "Eagle Base" is located at the foot of Mount Sharp (Aeolis Mons), in Quad 51 of Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater, near the site of the Curiosity rover landing. The Curiosity landing site is marked with a plinth in Project Eagle.^[4]

2017 D.I.C.E. Summit

Project Eagle was presented on stage at D.I.C.E. 2017 by NASA's Dr. Jeff Norris, and BBI's CEO Rob Cunningham and CCO Aaron Kambeitz. The talk took place directly after the conference keynote speech by Jeffrey Kaplan from Blizzard Entertainment.^[5] There, Jeff Norris said: "We wanted to publicly exhibit a project that shows what this medium could do for inspiring space exploration".^[6]

References

1. "Homeworld: Deserts Of Kharak's Creators Worked With NASA On A Cool Mars Project". Kotaku.com. 21 February 2017. Archived from the original on 2017-03-22. Retrieved 2017-03-22.
2. "Project Eagle". Blackbird Interactive. 2017-02-22. Archived from the original on 2017-03-22. Retrieved 2017-03-22.
3. Donnelly, Joe (20 February 2017). "Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak dev partners with NASA to build interactive Mars colony". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on 28 November 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2017.
4. "DICE 2017: Homeworld Creators Reveal Project Eagle in Collaboration with NASA's JPL - IGN". 22 February 2017. Archived from the original on 7 April 2024. Retrieved 27 March 2017.
5. "Five Additional Speakers Cover Mars Exploration And Vr". Dicesummit.org. Archived from the original on 2017-03-22. Retrieved 2017-03-22.
6. Tach, Dave (2017-02-24). "Video games can and should inspire entire societies to do better". Polygon. Archived from the original on 2017-03-22. Retrieved 2017-03-22.