My idea:
My idea and approach towards prototyping my immersive experience was to have the start of the environment within a creepy abandoned hallway, a room to the right so its not just a corridor and I wanted to focus a lot on the lighting within this scene, it really have with the mysterious aspect and increases the intrigue in the scene as I wanted it to be a foggy scene to some what conceal the end of the hallway. As the viewer is at the start of the scene the see a faint figure glide past them which I hoped to be the main focal point; the figure goes to the end of the hallway where it fades away, now that the viewers attention is on that figure, the camera is dragged towards it and the viewer can lot around the environment.
Users safety:
My approach towards making the user feel safe within the the scene was thought within the making of the scene and animation. I know that users tend not to like sharp things near their eyes especially if they are new to something therefore I thought not only would the frog atmosphere create a creepy, mysterious feel to the scene but would soften some of the sharp/ harsh edges of the hallway, just making the user feel a little bit more comfortable with the scene. in terms of the animation I didn’t want the figure (shown as the ball) to be close to the users eyes to make them feel more comfortable further and this also helps the user understand a little better what’s going on in the scene as they’re able to see the figure clearer.
Cyper-sickness:
It was important for me to really focus on the users enjoyment within these scene, and knowing that cybersickness can occur to many people I wanted to take this into consideration. therefore I wanted the hallway to be relatively calm and empty, with slow moving fog to casually grab the attention of the user. at the figure moves past (shown as the ball) I wanted to make sure it doesn’t accelerate past the user so the new user doesn’t swing their head around to try track the object, furthermore I had planned to use a leading indictor before the object floats by to give the user a heads up and isn’t shocked too much by it just to reduce cyber sickness.
My Process:
My process for making the scene was within maya, wasn’t aiming to create anything fancy, just wanted a rough layout of what will be included in the scene, such as walls, doorways, rooms and lighting; this just consisted of expanding and extruding standard meshes into a rough layout.
The story intension I intend with this scene is leaning on a lot of mystery, the character has found themselves within this creepy dingy hallway, not knowing where they are and with only one direction to go. I’ve gone down this route with the prototype because I feel like it works really well with the immersive aspect of the scene for the fact that viewer will know as much as what the character in the scene will know and what I mean by this is them looking around and scanning the area is the same movement and curiosity that the character in to scene will have so the feeling and thoughts towards the scene will be similar which I feel should be the aim with being a immersive experience.
Depth and dimensionality:
starting with depth, to create that feeling as if the hallway just continued almost endlessly I wanted the distance to be gradually becoming darker and the darkness comes from a faint doorway the user can just about see, the darkness makes it seem like there is more to the hallway than they can see which create the intrigue to proceed and the silhouette of the door frame suggest there is more door ways. Moving to dimensionality at the start the user is introduced to two rooms, the hallway and random room on the right which i included just to make the scene seem more unique and natural but there’s also that aspect that the user could be thinking, if there’s one room there could be more
In the scene below my intention was to create a rough block out again of a immersive portfolio for my work, the aim before creating this prototype was to make sure I utilise the fact that this will be viewed in VR. With this in mind when creating the the scene my idea was to have a new piece of my work in every turn the user will take so the viewer will always be viewing a different piece, this will always increase the chance of them being more interested in looking around the scene.
This is how a good use of 360 immersion can be used for advertisement. clash of clans is what the video is trying to advertise and it immediately starts of with a character besides you talking to you, this already creates two aspects of immersion, in game character talking directly to the viewer grabs their attention and they start thinking about what is happening, and the character just being out of view naturally makes the viewer go to turn beside them to look who it is. then the use of (in this case) enemies that flood the scene in different parts, low, high, behind and in front makes the user utilise the 360 aspect of the video and this is still staying within the theme to sell the viewer what the game has to offer because all the characters being displayed are within the game, user could be interested further to not only see what happens but what other characters they might be able to use in game. Therefore I believe 360 immersion works well for advertisement especially in games.
To use the VR to my advantage I thought to create the museum in a sphere so that the viewer is in a 360, makes the environment simply and easy for the viewer to navigate around so their accessibility is straight forward. Using five of my own work pieces for this block out environment I was able to make sure no matter where the viewer turned to or viewed they were looking at a piece of work. to make it easier to understand what a piece of work is further I thought to add a outer glow to the models to entice the viewer to move closer and check it out, my aim was to make sure it is as simple and easy to understand and use.
