NYU Tandon takes accepted students on virtual reality trip to Mars

With high school students applying to more and more colleges, schools are having to expend more effort in getting kids to choose their institution come decision day.
So NYU Tandon School of Engineering decided to do something legitimately cool this year: They’re sending admitted students a low-tech virtual reality device they’re calling Tandon Vision and instructions to download a virtual reality tour of Mars created by Tandon undergrad Matthew Conto.
Kids these days, etc.
“When students receive their devices and download the app, they can pilot their virtual ‘Lunabot’ up through the ceiling of the classroom and out into Conto’s meticulously detailed galaxy. (He drew upon material obtained from NASA, and the end result is such that a screenshot from the app looks almost identical to actual NASA photos),” according to the school. “The action is accompanied by a dreamlike soundtrack provided by Luke DuBois, who co-directs Tandon’s IDM Program.”

The young Matthew Conto seems to be working on some impressive projects, his website is worth a look.
Here’s what he had to say about building Tandon Vision:

Tandon Vision was created for Google Cardboard due to the incredible accessibility of VR experiences in Cardboard. Because Cardboard experiences don’t demand, and can’t create, the kind of high fidelity experiences of more expensive headsets, it allows a kind of low-fidelty yet immersive experience. The lack of cables tethering the phone mean that the user can turn in any direction. Because the cardboard only has one button, interfaces need to be primarily gaze controlled and more complex experiences need smarter interfaces capable of interpreting what users want.