Before working with virtual reality, I believed that video games were the ultimate culmination of everything I am interested in producing. I also found that games offered the most thorough test of all the skills in my toolbox. 3D modeling, texturing, rigging and animation brought to life with programming and manipulated by smartly designed user interaction are some of what designing video games entails. But there are other things as well, things that might be considered more cinematic and more cerebral. Story telling and mood setting, designed to provide the player with some sort of knowledge and or feeling, are often integral parts of game design. These same things have elevated importance in the more immersive experience of virtual reality. Developing virtual reality applications is very similar to game design however, immersion, is the key word in separating the two. It’s what makes virtual reality different and new.
Immersion in virtual reality differs from traditional gaming because the user is not only mentally inside a simulated environment but also has a physical presence there. Experimenting with what that means, and how it technically can be achieved, was my first step in developing for virtual reality. My VR device of choice is the HTC Vive. It is currently, in my opinion, the most complete VR product available because it provides full room spacial tracking of both the user’s head and hands. Before diving in and creating any specific content for VR, I spent a great deal of time developing a basic set of user interactions that take advantage of that tracking.
I ended up putting together an asset package for Unity called VRBasics. Included in the package is a set of basic interactions that, while using the tracked controllers of the Vive, allow a user to touch, push, grab and throw virtual objects. In addition, the package also includes methods of building and interacting with more complex objects like levers, sliders, buttons and connectable objects. Spending the time to develop these basic physical interactions, among others, turned out to be well worth it for two reasons. The first reason is that the experimentation allowed me to realize what works well in virtual reality and what doesn’t. For example, any type of movement through virtual space, other than physically walking, proved to be problematic because it induced nausea. Therefore, building a teleporting method, which is nausea free and can instantly place the user in different locations, proved to be an essential part of the VRBasics package. The second reason, why doing a great deal of preliminary work on VR interactions was helpful, was because it allowed for rapid prototyping of the more content specific interactions to come.
The Content
Ty Hollett, Assistant Professor of Education, Learning, Design, and Technology from the College of Education, is one of Teaching and Learning with Technology’s Faculty Fellows this year. He came to us with an interesting concept involving wanting to raise awareness of, and possibly even empathy for, the odyssey that takes place behind everyday food items found in the grocery store.
Wait what?!
Sounds like a perfect VR project right?
It did raise a few interesting design philosophy questions we had to consider before starting this “VR” project. Should we be hand picking subject matter that seems tailor made to take advantage of what VR is good at? Or can we present this particular content in a way that justifies using VR?
The truth of the matter is VR is still too new to answer either one of theses questions properly. Through experimentation we know what VR is technically good at but, we don’t really know the conceptually boundaries. How can we ever know this if we don’t try it with some obscure subject matter? This project is going to be a great test of that and if done successfully, it might serve as an example of how the technical affordances of VR can be used to deliver content that might not immediately seem like a perfect fit.
The food item we chose to start doing some VR experimenting with was a banana. We first had to make some decisions on what we wanted our users to know about the banana. We decided that it was important for them to realize that the banana’s they buy in a store traveled a great distance to be there. We also decided that it might be important to convey the environmental impact of that travel.
The Interactions
While developing VRBasics, I became keenly aware of what types of interaction could be successfully accomplished in VR and furthermore, justify the use of it. The question was how could we leverage quality VR interactions, such as grabbing and throwing etc., in telling the story of the traveling banana?
One of our goals was to illustrate the great distance a banana must travel before it gets to a store shelf. The majority of our initial concepts involved showing the travel path of the banana across a map or a globe. While this was useful graphically, providing the user with something to look at, it didn’t really take advantage of the affordances of VR and could have easily been done using some other form of media. The user needs to have some meaningful interaction if we want to make a truly VR worthy experience.
We decided that the best way for us to combine quality VR interaction with the metric of distance was to give our users some way of appreciating the amount of effort it takes to achieve that distance. In combination with the map, we decided to build interactions focused around the different modes of transportation a banana might take on it’s journey from tree to shelf. However, just sitting behind the wheel of a boat, plane, train or truck didn’t seem like enough because remember, one of our other goals was to build empathy for the effort. Yes, we could probably build empathy by having our users sit for hours and hours on end behind the wheel of some vehicle, but that’s not a realistic ask or what I would call a quality VR interaction.
The tracked controllers of the Vive provide the opportunity for the users to physically move their hands and arms. To take advantage of this, and to better illustrate amounts of effort, while using a quality VR interaction, we decided not to literally simulate the human interaction for operating vehicles. We decided to make it more physical. For boat travel, we built virtual oars for the users to row.
For air travel, we built wings for the users to flap.
For travel by train, we built a rail pump car for the users to physically interact with.
All of these interactions were extensions of the grab, lever and slider interactions developed in VRBasics. Therefore they were quick to prototype. We also built a banana tree for the users to climb, hand over hand, where they can physically pick bunches of bananas from the top.
The hope is that, by getting the users to physically exert themselves, while watching a banana move across a map, we can illustrate the large amounts of effort that go into that banana’s journey. We also hope this will install empathy in the user’s mind, for that effort, while providing them with a memorable experience.
The Venue
After I had the interactions prototyped, I started thinking more about the space where they would live and how that space could contribute to the overall experience. Our initial thoughts were that these activity would take place in a virtual grocery store or market. I thought that might make a good starting point but I also believed that there was an opportunity here to do something more meaningful with the design of the venue itself. My line of thinking comes from a blog post I did a few years ago about how universities could be like theme parks. This project might be a good opportunity to implement some of the ideas I had there.
I started designing a venue, to house our banana related activities, with one thought in mind… what would Disney do? If Disney World was going to build an attraction about the travels of a banana how would that feel and what would it look like? What types of details could be included in the venue’s design to not only help convey the desired message but also help lead a participant through it?
The design I came up with is donut shape facility with five separate rooms around a center chamber. The user will be placed in the first room when they decide they would like to purchase a banana from the market.
Room one is decorated like a jungle, it is the home of the banana tree climb activity. Here the users can climb the tree, pick bananas and place them in a large crate which sits on a track along the front wall of the room. Once the crate is full, the lid will close, and the crate will begin to move clockwise along the track, through a small door in the wall to the users’ left. A flashing yellow light, on top of the crate, will be used to keep the users attention. As the crate passes through the wall, a set of double doors will open along that same wall. Doors opening, crate moving, lighting scenario changing are methods the venue will be using to direct the user into to next room.
As the user passes through the double doors, entering the next room, they will be standing on a dock. At the end of the dock, sitting in the water, they will see a row boat, spot lit in the middle of the room. As they move across the dock towards the boat, if they look to their right, they will see the crate of banana’s on the track which continues to run along the front side of the room. A life preserver might drop onto the crate to prevent it from sinking into the water that covers the surface of this room.
Also, upon entering this room, the user will be able to see into the center chamber through a large pane of curved glass. In the middle of the center chamber floats a large hologram of a globe which illuminates the entire room with a soft blue glow.
Before getting into the row boat, the user will see a sign at the end of the dock, providing them with some instructions. Once the user enters the boat and grabs a hold of the oars, the dock will sink into the abyss as they begin to row. With every stroke, the banana crate will move further along the track from the right side of the room towards the left side. Also, the user will notice a small object on the globe, with a trailing line behind it, moving with every stroke.
Curious users who wonder what the object on the globe is will have the opportunity to zoom in to get a closer look. Using some type of control, the curved glass screen between the room and the center chamber will change to display a zoomable version of the globe hologram which will reveal a boat moving a crate of bananas across the globe.
As the users rows, they might face rocky seas, sharks circling the boat or other trials and tribulations of the sea. The user will know they have reached the end of the boat journey when they have rowed the crate from the right side of the room to the left side of the room. At which point a new set of double doors will open along the left wall and the crate will pass through to the other side.
A dock, this time on the left side of the boat, will raise up from the water and provide the user safe passage to newly opened doors which lead into the next room.
While standing in the newly opened doorway, the user will see a runway with a set of wings sitting spot lit in the center of the next room. As the user approaches the set of wings, they will again see a sign with a set of instructions for the next leg of their journey. Runway lights will begin flash clearing the user for take off. Grabbing the set of wings, one in each hand, the user will begin to flap, sending them physically high into the air. As they continue to flap they will again be able to watch, from an aerial view, the banana crate move along the rail in front of the room. The crate might also be tossed high into the air with each flap.
A new icon, traveling on a new path, will also appear as part of the globe hologram in the center chamber. This icon will be an airplane carry a crate of bananas.
The user will know they have reached the end of the flying stage when the crate again has reached the far left hand side of the room and a new set of doors will open. The crate will pass into the next room and, upon safely landing, the user will follow.
In the next room the user will find the rail pump car. Looking to their right they may notice the track, that has been transporting the banana crate through the first several rooms has been damaged. Therefore, the crate itself must be loaded onto the front of the pump car.
Once loaded, the user must operate the pump car, which sits on an intact section of track, to transport the crate across the room.
The globe will now be displaying a train icon with a corresponding trail behind it.
Once the user manages to traverse across the room with the banana crate, the final doors will open and it will be reloaded onto it’s primary track.
Passing into the final room, the user will be rewarded with the banana they where originally intending to buy, only now, with a greater appreciation of the cost to get it.
Check back here for more updates as this project progresses.
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