MY MIXED REALITY JOURNEY WITH UNITY
Let me begin this blog post by talking about the first time I have ever used Unity. I first was introduced to unity through a class named Interactive Media: Mixed reality Design — that class takes us through the fundamentals of VR, AR and MR. As a tool to design our worlds, we use Unity, a game engine that can also be used for VR and AR development.
I first began learning about Unity through class activities and then through my first ever AR application which was a maze that a ball could go through and escape from.
A little buggy at first but I managed to fix it in the later stages. It was a difficult project to start with, especially because the build was supposed to be made on and IOS device, so with security concerns from the device it was tougher to get through it and build it — but thankfully after many tries, it was done.
I proceeded to work on my VR application, but to be quite honest, my first encounter with unity made me very displeased with the whole process. So I first wanted to create a 360 VR video, that way I did not have to work with Unity as much as it was too much of struggle for me — even though it was going to be more time consuming. So my idea was to create a 360 VR video that would represent what the day in the life of a quarantined person during a lockdown is like.
However, our Professor gave us the VR headsets which I ended up really enjoying and made me want to develop in Unity again — so that’s what I did, took my idea and developed it into the software.
I first started by designing the room, it is a pretty simple room but it gets the story straight to the point which is what I wanted. The user first begins by waking up to a world with a pandemic, where they are locked own in their homes and can’t go out — the dullness of the room also plays with the simplicity that someone can have when in lockdown.
The next move was adding stakes to my story, so I added another scene by implementing a button that allows for the user to navigate from one place to another.
The second scene is actually the front door, this is where the player can access their mail.
Once they enter, the player will see that their box is empty and that no mail came through (in this photo, there was an error in the material that was used to color the ceiling and ground, which is the reason why they are pink.
The player then goes back through a similar button to the bedroom.
In order to transition from scene to scene, I took the same button that I had already created and changed the public class and the load scene part of the script accordingly to their scenes.
Once back home the user goes back to their routine and cleans up their house, through a similar series of events they go through scenes after scenes until they reach their bed and fall asleep. Once they wake up they enter a dream phase and everything starts to float, representing the main character’s dementia.
The application, ends in the main character waking up from their sleep, and being asked if they would like to go through the experiment once more.
The user-tests for my VR application were mostly referencing the lack of walls and realism to the scene, so I decided to add better lighting and more objects within the scene.
