Influence of Immersive Virtual Reality in Understanding Independence Day Ceremony

 The challenge of the young generation today at the national Independence Day ceremony is to understand its connection totheir current lives as a digital generation. This study aims to use an immersive virtual reality game to entertain and educatethe importance of the Tanzanian Independence Day ceremonies among the current youths in the digital era. These ceremonies connote the historical timeline in the nation’s struggle; furthermore, they can serve the meaning to the young generation in global citizenship, social interactions, human equality, and democracy. Independence deserves serious attention in enlightening the youths on the importance and respect of using digital tools, interactions in the cyber world,also guiding them to become better digital citizens, and the importance of environmental conservation. Using an immersiveand interactive storytelling experience, with a specific set of Tanzanian scenarios, the player explores immersive scenes,from the current modern living room to historical scenes with different interaction modes (passive and active), that willtrigger questions and answers, to the player within story structures. Tanzania like many African countries in the 60s got itsindependence in 1961, which makes it difficult for the youths of today to connect with their current lives. Afterward, the player will complete a standardized questionnaire, regarding their sense of presence, cognitive interest, and engagement during the game. By playing this game, the young generation may gain cognitive interests on their national Independence Day, learn about geographical nature, and understand the importance of interacting as digital citizens. In addition, they feela presence when they navigate freely through the game. The use of this implicitly structured VR game may increase spatialinformation and several interesting edutainments environments. This immersive virtual interacted environment system wascreated by Unity and then build for several devices including mobile phones, websites, head-mounted displays (HMD), andVR sets.