Category: VR / AR Fundamentals

For my first AR project, I wanted to create something that incorporates something I just love so much: noodles. (It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but I eat noodles at least once every few days…) Being in Shanghai for the last few years and growing up in an Asian household, noodles have become a staple for me. 

Initially, I wanted to create an experience where you could walk into a bowl of ramen and sit down in it, but I wasn’t sure how to make a bowl so big or do that, so I had to scale back my idea. Instead, I created large bowls of ramen that would embody the essence of an experience eating ramen in a restaurant. Covid has made me nostalgic about dining out at some of my favorite ramen spots and I wanted to create an experience that could bring me back to that ambience and environment. 

I got the ramen figures from Reality Composer’s food section, and chose different styles. I also included a little banner in front of the bowls to explain what to do once you’re in the AR world. With each bowl of ramen, you tap on it and an associated sound or ambience plays along with a movement behavior to indicate the user has indeed tapped on the bowl. The first image shows how I was able to merge the behaviors together so that both behaviors would go off at the same time, rather than sound first than movement. The second image shows a bird eye view of the ramen. The third image shows what the user will see at first.

Here is the link to a screen recording on my phone in AR: https://youtu.be/mpJ4nd2ef5k

In the future, I would have liked to pursue my original idea of creating a giant bowl of ramen where the user could “walk into” because that would have just been such a dream for ramen lovers! I think a lot of the process of creating this experience was largely based on just exploring what RC was and how to use it. I was especially confused with the anchor aspect and how to maneuver around that, so that ended up taking a lot of time. After I gain more knowledge about RC, I would like to continue with this project!

Accurate, Prophetic, Powerful

• Is 5G a Game Changer for VR and AR? (yes!)

Considering the potential speed increase, low latency, and high computational power, 5G brings a lot of potential to stream VR/AR content, allowing another step to a more untethered experience.

• Create An Entire Home Gym With Oculus Quest

I think this is particularly the case more so with cardio and floor workouts rather than weightlifting, but having a coach that guides you in VR can give the extra push that people need.

• VR Skin

Haptics are absolutely an important part of VR and the sooner they can migrate away from controllers, the better. This allows for a more realistic touch sensation than moving around and holding things with a controller.

• Adobe Appears! (in AR space)

I think AR cameras will definitely be regarded as important if we are shifting to an AR based society. Doinf something like taking AR pictures in real-time seems interesting.

Absolutely Silly

• VR for Cows and Milk Production

Do I really need to say anything about this one? The headset doesn’t even cover the cow’s eyes correctly!

• VR for Women in Labour

I feel that labour pains are too intense that a virtual environment would not be helpful in easingba prexisting pain.

• VR Live Concerts
  

One of the best parts of a love concert is how analog it is. You get to meet and talk to other people, dance, look at all the imperfections. Something is lost when that shifts into Vr, that I’d loses its appeal

• Death of Mobile VR

Phone VR may be dying out, but that is only considering the current generation of phones. I think that there is still potential for phone based VR in future devices, that may be designed with more of a VR focus.

For my final project, I worked with Kenneth and Kennedy to present Extinction: A Commentary on Urbanization in Natural Settings, which showcase the animals of the African Safari going extinct, until we see these animals again as an exhibit in the Shanghai Natural History Museum.

My primary focus was the visual post-production of the project. From the 360 video we took from inside the museum, I took some still frames from the shot and used Photoshop to change the environment to a full landscape. I did this several times, with each iteration removing an animal, until the final image was just an empty landscape. I then used Premiere to cut together these images with fade transitions to provide the effect of the animals disappearing.

Some of the difficulties I ran into while working on this project was that I had issues with creating a stereoscopic image. I attempted to edit both eyes individually but there was too much discrepancy between the two images that there was weird artifacting and graininess from this. Because of this, I chose to leave the final video in 2D, until it fades back into the museum, which is 3D.

I feared that the 2D shift into 3D may have looked strange, but based on the expressions that people made afterwards, most were quite pleased with our work. I knew that if I wanted criticism, the most genuine responses were going to be the reaction of children. Based on the results of the show, I can say most of the kids really enjoyed our project and it was amazing to see their fascination when they see the animals dissapearing.

In terms of improvement, I would hope that there is another method as to actually making the image stereoscopic. Perhaps there is a way, but my Photoshop skills is not to that caliber. I would hope that I could improve on that. Our 360 audio also was not functional, as it played a mono channel in both ears. The ambisonic sound was a final and last minute decision and went without a lot of testing and debugging. In terms of that, I wish we had started working on audio earlier. I would also wish that the first portion wasn’t static. For example I would have preferred to see some moving animals as a video rather than a still image. I think if I were to redo my project differently, I would have made my own environment and added 3D models that moved, but I felt that my current skills in 3D game engines are not good enough to realistically do this.

GOAL

Write a brief summary about your VR production experience – what worked, what didn’t, what you’d do differently next time, and what you learned.

Continue reading “VR Production Experience”