This projcet is made with Unity 2019.4.1f1and VRTK 3 on Windows 10. It contains a scene with 5 avatars and numerous small objects that are interactable. There are also 8 large object where two of them are interactable.
Dowloading
Download UnityHub and install Unity version 2019.4.1f1
Download from Github Page and unzip the file.
Add and Open the project folder as a new project in Unity Hub.
Find and Open the scene EVL under Assets/virtualuic-evl/Scenes
Click on the play button once the project is loaded into Unity.
"My Desk Area"
Once you have entered the scene, you will be able to see me sitting at one of the desk with 10 other small objects scattered around me. All of those ten objects can be picked up like the chips bag shown in the picture(including the cat). They can also collide with all the other objects in the enviroment. Once you walk close to the avatar representing me you will be able to hear a sound surronding the area, and if you touch the avatar with your controller, the avatar will perform a different animation and say something interesting as shown in the second figure on the right. However, the animation will not be able to trigger agian before you move a certain distance away from the avatar.
4 Other Students
As you can see, there are four other students sitting on different desks in the scene. Two of them are created on my own and two of them are avatars I got from my classmates Samantha and Jake. They have their own animation and will also change to a different animation if you touch them with your controller. The same rule for triggering animation applys here where you have to walk away and come back to trigger it agian.
One of the Avatar Performs a Different Animation
Spinner and Vending Machines
There are also two large interactive objects in the scene which are the spinner and the vending machine. The vending machine has two buttons attached to it, if you press the red button the machine will eject a hot dog, and if you press the blue button, it will eject a bag of chips. As for the spinner, there is another button on the wall and if you press it, it will spin the spinner for you. Then the vending machine will eject the item that corrsponds to the spin result. You can find more demostration of this in the video.
Different Lighting Scheme
As you guys have probaboly noticed in "My Desk Area", there appears to be two buttons on the desk. These two buttons are the light switches for the new lighting scheme. The bottom button will turn the new lighting scheme on and the top one will turn it off. The result is shown in the second figure on the right where it will reveal the avatar who are based on a real person in the real world.
In project 2, we had a life-size virtual playset that can be placed into a real world, but you can always feel something is off because the style of the virtual playset is conflicting with the style of the real world which makes it hard to immerse ourselves into the playset. With the VR application we now have in project 3, everything is in a synthetic world with the same style which makes it super immersive since we can feel that we are in the same world as everything else in the environment. This is the power of virtual reality where it allows you to experience the virtual world like you are one of them.
I have a virtual reality headset myself, so I was able to experience the project the way it was meant to be experienced. I also tried using the simulator when I was debugging, and it is a completely different experience when using an actual VR headset. The fact that you could touch, grab, and interact with all the objects in the scene just feel much better than looking at a virtual scene on your phone where you can not interact with. I was able to pick up pretty much everything in the virtual reality scene and make them interact with other objects in the scene, it gives me the feel that the things I am doing actually impacts the virtual world which makes it much more fun and immersive.
The fact that you can only see the virtual environment makes the experience much more immersive as well. In project 2, the models I had clearly shows that the playset does not belong to the real world, and the fact that I could only look at the playset through my phone quickly breaks the immersion for me. I think this is a general problem for every augmented reality application since it is really hard to get models to look photo realistic and there are basically no feedback and interaction. However, as of now, virtual reality is a much more mature technology than augmented reality which gives developers much more power in creating an immersive experience.
For example, there are numerous products to help improve the immersion for virtual reality such as the haptic suit and glove which allows you to feel everything that is happening in the virtual world. This kind of products helps increase the immersion of VR experience to a whole new level which is something that augmented reality cannot achieve at this point in time. Another problem with augmented reality is that it is not easy to make the object interactable which is an important thing to have in order to make the world feels real. Unlike in virtual reality it is an easy thing to achieve and the fact that everything including the user is in a purely virtual world make it much easier to create a better experience.
Jake's Avatar - Jake Campbell
Samantha's Avatar - Samantha Lam
Snack Machines - VIS Games
VR Cardboard - LunarCats Studio
Lowpoly Toon Cat Lite - Polydactyl
Low Poly Western Saloon - David Stenfors
FREE Casual Food Pack- Mobile/VR - Lumo-Art 3D
Low Poly Office Props - LITE - RRFreelance / PiXelBurner
Elvs Covid Goggles1 - Elvaerwyn
Elvs Covid Mask1 - Elvaerwyn
Rucksack / backpack - FrogT
MAGA Hat - MargaretToigo
Cat Meow 2 Sound - Cat Stevens
1 Person Cheering Sound - Jett Rifkin
Fake Applause Sound - Mike Koenig