CS428 Project 2: Scare Co

Scare Co is a room-scale immersive Virtual Reality App using Unity and VRTK

This video is a demonstration of the app and its features. Please watch the video at 2 times speed but also notice that a 3d vertigo may happens.

View project on GitHub

Download Unity Source Code

You will need a virtual reality headset, such as Oculus Quest to run the project on the room scale. This project is tested on Oculus Quest 2. If you don't have a VR headset, you can use the built-in spatial simulator to play on your Unity 2019.4.28f1.

Please follow the instructions below to run the project.

1. Download the starter project here with the VRTK v4 library.

2. Download the source code from GitHub.

3. Replace the Assets and Project Settings folders in the starter project with the folders from GitHub.

4. Check the project is run on the Android platform in Unity.

5. Open Scene from the Assets folder and make sure that one of the two CameraRigs.SpatialSimulator and CameraRigs.UnityXR is on and the other is off depending on whether you want to run in the headset or the simulator.

6. If you use the simulator, then click Play. Otherwise, plug in your Oculus Headset. Click Edit ->Build Settings -> Build And Run.

Or

1. Download the test.apk from Google Drive directly.

2. Use Oculus Developer Hub. Go to Device Manager -> Apps -> Add an APK. Add the test.apk and click Launch.

1. Grab Objects: Press Primary Hand Trigger Button to grab an object and hold it to keep grabbing.

2. Teleport: Use Left Thumbstick to control the direction. And Press the Thumbstick to teleport.

3. Recenter Play Area: Hold Reversed Button until the circle is finished.

I decided to make different phobia curing scenarios for my clients in this project.

1. Social Phobia: I use my own aviator dancing with the teacher at the center of the office.

2. Zombie Dungeon: This is a classic Americanistic phobia dating back to DOOM. So I use fences to keep the zombies apart from the clients and use a daily setup to make the clients feel at home.

3. "Waldeinsamkeit": This is a German phobia. It means the feeling of being alone in the woods. I use low-poly models to make the scenario less scary.

4. Arachnophobia: I make spiders jumping out of the drawer and finally explode out of the drawer like fireworks.

5. Thalassophobia: A room-scale whale that shits donuts when clients touch it. Hope the laughers cure the phobia.

Following is the list of all the assets used. Assets downloaded from various sources have been provided with a hyperlink.

The frame rate remains high. When I set losing 5 frames in 5 seconds to take a screenshot, it took the screenshot only when I generate too many donuts.

Viewing and interacting with my world is quite different in the simulator and the headset.

Firstly, it takes less than 30 seconds to play in the simulator and takes two minutes and more to build and run on the headset. But I still can't help building and running on the headset after each change because it is so immersive! Before I took part in this class, the concept of VR for me was limited to my summer working experience in a VR experience hall five years ago in Shanghai. My job is to help customers to cross the VR volcano safely. My impression of VR at the time was a huge device that required the use of a safe to hold the host, was heavy, expensive, and needed a cable head display to finish playing several animated games that could take less than 30 seconds to complete each in length. Or some environmental-unfriendly waste made of cardboard, leather bands, and lenses that holds cell phones. I did not expect that VR headsets have come to the masses of consumers after only five years. Oculus Quest 2 is now below $300, and it is even cheaper than the newly launched Nintendo switch. The point that I am trying to say is that I am regaining my faith in VR by doing this project. Although build and run cost me more time, I prefer to do it because it is a more advanced form of media. Who will enjoy reading if the story is shot in a film, programmed in a video game? VR is a channel that can convey more information. It is immersive! For example, if you don't use VR. You won't find a spider model jumping to you is scary. The whale's tail above your head is huge enough. Even my zombies are not frightening at all. These are the information that people lose when using a simulator.

Secondly, I never thought I would make my avatar realistic when I developed an AR game because AR is rarely proper for room-scale use. But, when I set in VR. The first thing that jumped into my head was to create my realistic avatar. Because the immersive makes me what to fit in the universe. I want to find a map of myself from reality into the virtual world. Through research, I noticed that there are many tools for me to achieve that. In this project, I tried Character Creator 3 with its Headshot extension. It enables people to use one single photo to model a pretty realistic human model. It also can be retargeted in Unity as Humanoid and performing complex animation by using Mixamo. It is hilarious when you see yourself doing something you would never do in real life 🤣 I also want to try Omniverse by Nvidia in my next project to render my avatar making it more realistic. I have been a fan of cloud computing before. I saw the power of cloud computing in gaming, such as Stadia bringing AAA games into a browser. But recently, something strange has been happening. The temptation of GPUs is more potent for me. I want to build a PC that has a powerful GPU. I think the VR makes a spell on me 😂 But I am still confident that I will try to squeeze out my desktop's vast computing power in the third project.

Thirdly, the development in the gaming industry needs serious research. I want to express that I am frustrated when I develop games. Because as an ECE student, I never experience platforms such as Unity and Blender before using the WYSIWYG application to create. In my understanding, developing means writing codes in an Editor. The VRTK door that uses not a single code is quite mind-blowing for me. I admit it is cool. But it can hardly be called excellent. The tree structure? Child's child's child's child? It doesn't seem a neat way for humans to develop. Any tiny error in any hierarchy is difficult for humans to detect. Maybe the good news is that it can be formed as modular. So, every sword has two edges. I wish there is going to be a uniform library for VR in the future that I can drag and drop the model from it. And I will not need to change so many parameters in different hierarchies. I think until that day the VR will embrace its content explosion.