“Iron & Steel”

A project by Erasmus Schmidt, Eddie Husemann,
Jaro Abraham & Silke Markel

A VR Blacksmithing Experience

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A VR Blacksmithing Experience ✳︎

“Concept”

We built an interactive VR game in Unity to teach the iron carbon diagram in a hands-on, playable way. The iron carbon diagram is a core concept in materials science, explaining how microstructures like ferrite, pearlite, austenite, or martensite form depending on temperature and carbon content, and how these structures determine whether a steel becomes hard, tough, or brittle.

To make this tangible, we recreated a sword forging process in VR. At the start, a troll NPC prompts the player to choose a carbon content for the iron, which directly influences the material properties of the final blade. Throughout the forging process, the iron carbon diagram is displayed above the furnace in real time, allowing players to track the current temperature and phase state and decide when to pull the sword
from the heat.

At the end, the finished sword is tested against a dummy. Depending on the choices made during the process, the blade either holds up or breaks, giving players immediate feedback on whether their understanding of the diagram translated into a well-forged weapon.

The project is aimed at engineering and materials science students, metalworking apprentices, and anyone looking to build an intuitive understanding of heat treatment and steel microstructure through experimentation rather than memorization.