Pickle Rick
For this Project two I had a really fun time making and customizing the space to my liking. I really enjoyed putting in characters and items that were really unrealistic but really remind me of my childhood. Things like Pickle Rick bringing me back to the days that I was sitting in front of the Television as the next episode would come on. Or something like the Wonka bar reminding me of Charlie and the chocolate factory movie and the times I was siting next to my parents watching the wonders and creativity of that time. I also liked making items grabbable as each one you make it appropriately collides with the things around it like an actual object making it really life like and immersive. I thoroughly enjoyed making this project as immersive as possible making it almost life like. This is achieved by using the Prefabricated items from the VRTK4 commands as they allowed us to not only achieve such great physics to these items, but it also made it more and more grabbable and interactive like a real office.
With Virtual reality technology ever growing more and more interactive and immersive to replicate actual real life surroundings. This type of technology really puts creativity in the hands of the users as it allows them to do a number of things, they most likely couldn’t do in real life. One kind of example is if you have a person who is normally shy and to timid to be themselves around physical others, but they are a very kind and thoughtful person who really is quite funny. If you put them in a Virtual reality environment, they can now find this new voice in themselves as they start to do things they normally wouldn’t do in real life. Thins kind of life changing experience and interaction leaves people with the notion of wanting more and becoming more use to interactions and behaviors.
Another example would be if a co worker is angry at another co worker they can now take there frustrations out on another person in Virtual reality. Like we did in our project adding other characters across the way, now when we grab objects from our office, we can now throw them at these characters and get rid of any bent up rage you had previously. One problem we as people in a society have is that we don’t have a release for our emotions. Not one that’s stable enough to make us better in any way. Seeing this application helps address this problem and makes the light of this more and more important.
So in conclusion, Life is already troubling just trying to maintain the societal appeasement, making us dull and absolutely miserable, but with Virtual reality technology expanding and breaking the barriers of immersion. We start to see a new space for use to be ourselves. We say this with the birth of social media as people started to make new personas and start to become more and more different versions of themselves.
View of Susan
Wonka Bar
I went to great lengths to personalize my space, down to using the exact same model of the phone I actually use (complete with the notification light reminding me of all the people I'm ignoring)
The premise of this project was to use Unity and VRTK4 to design the cubicle of our dreams in virtual reality. That may be the surface-level premise, but the applications and concept behind it go much deeper. I believe the true purpose of this project was to experiment with the blending of the two realities: virtual and actual, and how we can use that blend to improve the lives of people.
For this project, we had to not only add a large number of models to the scene, but we also needed to provide the user the ability to interact with these objects through the senses of touch and hearing. It was not until I had the opportunity to demo this scene, pick up the Lysol can and spray it that I realized just how much this immersion that VR gives you hits home. While wearing the virtual reality headset, despite the relatively crude nature of some of the models and elements of the scene, I really did feel like this could be a cubicle I might work in some day. On top of that, though, I never realized during the design process how even in VR, the way I arranged the objects, the colors, the workflow these objects would afford me if it really were my work space would truly mattered.
This is not to say that I was so immersed in the final product that I forgot it was a simulation. There is a certain tangibility to the real world that you cannot escape once you put on the goggles, no matter how high-resolution they may be or how accurate the tracking is. It was especially challenging to shape the colliders to the exact measurements of the objects so that they would actually be "in your hands" when you grab them. Many of the objects, in fact, do not clip exactly to the controller when grabbed, which was something we couldn't seem to solve in some cases.
However, if we were to look at this project not from the angle of immersion, but from the angle of usefulness in roughly estimating the design of a space, I believe it is incredibly effective. Anyone that has ever gone through the process of renting or buying an apartment or home or other such space knows how fickle the mind can be when trying to construct mental picture a physical space from only photographs. Virtual reality gives people the tools to eliminate the hassle of relying on the mental by manifesting it into a pseudo-physical scene that nearly anyone can experience. Additionally, given that VR is becoming more and more affordable, I would not be surprised if in the next couple years, VR applications much like the IKEA Place app used in a previous homework assignment become commonplace. I would venture to say that many furniture stores will begin to implement virtual reality booths into their stores where people can bring 3D models of their space and insert the furniture options to experience them first-hand before buying.
Big Brother Andy is always watching...
You can't hide from me, Mr. Chassis