Lab Note: Lunar Surface Kit Demonstrator
Gary Ritchie, October 31, 2025
Explore the lunar surface in a first-person open-world demo, based on work completed for the Astrobotic Foundation’s Moonshot Museum.
What’s Inside?
This application lets you:
- Explore a small open world with ancient lavatubes (don’t forget your flashlight!)
- Collect a few interesting rocks
- Wander through a futuristic colony 3D-printed using regolith (can you find the souped-up rovers?)
Project Context
The assets in this demo–the environment, rovers, and buildings–were originally created for the "Cosmic Careers" interactive planetarium game. You can read the full case study about the original project and its goals right here:
Download the Demo
The demonstrator is available for Linux and Windows. Give it a try!
Note: Mac users who don’t mind some rough edges, and willing to provide feedback, are invited to contact me via one of the methods below.
Minimum system requirements
- Operating System: 64 bit; Linux (Ubuntu 22.04); MacOS (untested); Windows 10, 11
- Monitor resolution: 1280 × 720
- CPU: 2.8 GHz
- RAM: 2 GB
- GPU VRAM: 4 GB
Tech Notes
Made possible by the following
Special thanks
- Mike Morrison at Digital Media Workshop provided valuable feedback, audio engineering and in-game debugging tool.
- Mike Hennessy at Moonshot Museum provided a 3D model of the Griffin lander and the opportunity to work one one of the most interesting projects of 2025!
It was a fun experiment to build a standalone, exploratory demo from the original 'Cosmic Careers' assets. Let me know what you think if you get a chance to explore it.
Cheers,
Gary
gary@lyonritchie.com
Bluesky,
LinkedIn,
Mastodon,
X