My blog in VR – Unit1&2

This is a post on my AR design.

My game is called Balloon Popper and the theme of the game is to pop the balloon that appear on the player’s screen.

For this game, I designed two 3D models in Blender. One is a push pin to use for popping the balloons and the latter is a balloon that is going to fill the screen of the player’s phone and will be floating up and down. (equivalent photos of the models are in the media library).

The game:

The player is going to open the screen of the smartphone and at the press of the start button many colorful balloons are going to appear on the screen. The balloons are floating up and down in the space where the player is at currently. The goal of the game is to pop all the balloons that appear on the screen as fast as possible. The game is has a timer that stops as soon as all the balloons are popped. The better the player becomes the lesser time he/she will need to pop all the balloons.

In order to pop the balloons, the player must scan the target image which is currently an Einstein image. The player can only pop the balloons using the pin that appears via the target image.

Additional effects include a popping sound every time a balloon gets popped and a particle effect everytime a balloon gets popped.

The game constists of three buttons: Start, Restart, Pause.

Start button: Starts the timer, the balloons appear on the screen upon first pressing start, if the timer is on pause the start button will make the timer work again where it was left before the pause.

Pause: pauses the timer

Re-start: restarts a brand new game.

The design and coding were made in Unity with the help of Vuforia Studio.

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Enchanted forest:

In folklore and fantasy, an enchanted forest is a forest under, or containing, enchantments. Such forests are described in the oldest folklore from regions where forests are common, and occur throughout the centuries to modern works of fantasy. They represent places unknown to the characters, and situations of liminality and transformation. The forest can feature as a place of threatening danger, or one of refuge, or a chance at adventure.

Medieval romance

The figure of an enchanted forest was taken up into chivalric romances; the knight-errant would wander in a trackless forest in search of adventure. As in the fairy tales, he could easily find marvels that would be disbelieved closer to home. John Milton wrote in Paradise Regained (Bk ii. 359) of “Fairy damsels met in forest wide / By knights of Logres, or of Lyones,” and such ladies could be not only magical aid to the knight, but ladies for courtly love.

Queer Research:

The rainbow flag has become the easily-recognized colors of pride for the gay community. The multicultural symbolism of the rainbow is nothing new — Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition also embraces the rainbow as a symbol of that political movement. The rainbow also plays a part in many myths and stories related to gender and sexuality issues in Greek, Native American, African, and other cultures.

The labrys is a double-sided hatchet or axe commonly used in ancient European, African, and Asian matriarchal societies as both a weapon and a harvesting tool. Greek artwork depicts the amazon armies of Europe wielding labrys weapons. Amazons ruled with a dual-queen system in which one queen was in charge of the army and battle, and the other queen stayed behind to administer the conquered cities. Amazons were known to be ferocious and merciless in battle, but once victorious they ruled with justice. Today, the labrys is a lesbian and feminist symbol of strength and self-sufficiency.

Also, the labrys played a part in ancient mythology. Demeter, the goddess of the earth, used a labrys as her scepter. Rites associated with the worship of the Demeter, as well as Hecate (the goddess of the underworld), are believed to have involved lesbian sex.

Like many aspects of queer culture, it’s not surprising that lavender’s unique color symbolism often skirts under the radar, especially when it comes to mainstream society.

In Western culture it started life as a color of desire, thanks to the lyric genius of 7th century BC poet Sappho, whose papyrus fragments told of her erotic predilections for younger women with “violet tiaras.” Fast forward a few centuries, and in the 1920s, violets were still drawing together members of the lesbian community, who gifted the delicate flowers as an expression of sapphic interest.

Flower: Lavender

‘Lavender boy’ has been a derogatory term for gay men since the 1920s, with any man showing femme (or not-quite-hetero) characteristics described as having a ‘streak of lavender’.

The use of this flower as a symbol is thought to come from the purple colour of the plant, since this vibrant lavender is the colour you would get if you mixed pink and baby blue, both culturally positioned as ‘gendered’ colours.

Today lavender roses are sometimes shared with LGBT+ partners on Valentine’s Day or when celebrating a same sex marriage.

Flower: Gladioli

Ever since the singer Morrissey burst onto the scene with The Smiths, his sexuality has always been a matter of interest to the British press. Writing sexually-ambiguous songs with themes of love and lust, The Smiths spent a fortune on gladioli for him to hand out at gigs, wave on stage and wear in his back pocket. When asked about the meaning of the flowers, he explained that “flowers are simply innocent and beautiful and have never caused strife for anyone”.

Unicorn

It’s wise to bring up the ever-changing nature of the unicorn. Did you know that the creature started off being described as having the feet of an elephant and the body of a lion? This is seen in many Latin books that had strived to describe the mythological. Of course, the old description doesn’t have a lot to do with modern depictions of the unicorn.

But even today they appear in a crazy variety of colors and styles – from pink to black, some with lithe bodies and some with muscular physiques, and some even with wings (although those are called Alicorns). The drawings people do of all these different unicorns, gosh! I could scroll through them for hours! 

This fluidity between forms resonates with a lot of the LGBT+ community who don’t conform to the gender binary. While it might have been normalized to think of gender as either male or female, this is not true for all. Like the unicorn’s changing form, there are many gender identities that fall under the LGBT+ banner. 

Another version of why the unicorn resonates with the LGBT+ community is that it started out as a symbol of masculinity. The unicorn adorned royal heraldic symbols under which men rode into battles and entered glorious tournaments.

The LGBT+ Feeling as Mythical as the Unicorn

The mythical status of the unicorn is also a large part of why the LGBT community connects with them. Especially bisexual people, who receive erasure from both outside and inside the community. They take on the symbol of the unicorn almost in jest. They also feel like they sometimes don’t exist to the outside world. In fact, now that I think about it, this is also why the LGBT+ love all kinds of mermaids and selkies as well! 

Most importantly, the mysterious and hidden nature of the unicorn reflects the sense of otherness LGBT+ folks feel. Facing the challenge of walking the tightrope between their identities and societal norms. The ever-changing and elusive unicorn is a perfect symbol for these inner struggles. 

In my VR experience:

The rainbow is a common pattern/theme in my experience.

I have also added blue flowers to represent blue gladiolis.

The lavender color as well more colors from all the queer flags are used as color palette for the design of the VR environment and gameobjects.

The labrys is used in one interaction in the experience.

The theme of love is persistent throughout the VR experience.

https://www.visithull.org/discover/story-behind-lgbt-50-flowers/

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/lgbtq-lavender-symbolism-pride/index.html

https://www.rainbowdepot.com/lgbt-symbols.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enchanted_forest

https://unicornyard.com/unicorn-lgbt-meaning/

This week I decided to eliminate the flying unicorn animation I had prepared even though I managed to work it through. I did some research on VR motion sickness and realized that the flying unicorn interaction I had in mind might cause sicness and maybe have extra consequences.

More specifically the interaction I had in mind was to have the player tap the unicorn and then fly with the unicorn until a specific set location – the player would not be able to choose where to land. However, this interaction is prone to inducing sickness to the player so I chose to eliminate it.

Research behind:

“Virtual reality sickness occurs when exposure to a virtual environment causes symptoms that are similar to motion sickness symptoms. The most common symptoms are general discomfort, headache, stomach awareness, nausea, vomiting, pallor, sweating, fatigue, drowsiness, disorientation, and apathy. Other symptoms include postural instability and retching. Virtual reality sickness is different from motion sickness in that it can be caused by the visually-induced perception of self-motion; real self-motion is not needed.

Virtual reality sickness may have undesirable consequences beyond the sickness itself. For example, Crowley (1987) argued that flight simulator sickness could discourage pilots from using flight simulators, reduce the efficiency of training through distraction and the encouragement of adaptive behaviors that are unfavorable for performance, compromise ground safety or flight safety when sick and disoriented pilots leave the simulator. Similar consequences could be expected for virtual reality systems. Although the evidence for performance decrements due to virtual reality sickness is limited, research does suggest that virtual reality sickness is a major barrier to using virtual reality, indicating that virtual reality sickness may be a barrier to the effective use of training tools and rehabilitation tools in virtual reality. “

Conclusion:

I decided to change the flying unicorn interaction because not only I feared that it may induce VR sickness but also believed there could be chances the interaction may subconsciously encourage flying phobia or height phobias to the players.

The new interaction:

For now, the new interaction is to have the player tap/pat the unicorn. The Unicorn then flies away by itself and in its position is a shape of the unicorn made in particle effects. The player walks through this particle mesh and gets the feeling of walking through the unicorn’s soul.

Virtual reality sickness. (2020, October 30). Retrieved December 06, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality_sickness

Hello everyone,

This is a post on my core interactions of the VR experience.

• Point and Shoot for general selection of objects and menu buttons
• Navigation: like VR chat: point & shoot with one controller and rotate the field of view with the other controller (probably right & left ? – maybe depends on whether you are left-handed or right-handed ? -food for thought )
• Picking up objects: Step 1)Navigate close to the object – see interaction above-. Step 2) simulate cyclical grabbing gesture with arm together with side grip button in the controllers
• Throw objects: Given that you have already picked up the object (see interaction above), you throw the object by doing an arm extension gesture and releasing it with the side grip button. (e.g. throw rocks)
• Releasing an object: given that you already picked up the object, you release it by releasing the side grip button in the controller
• Cutting down leaves with the labrys: given that you already picked up the labrys, the player extends the arm and does an “X” shaped arm movement to cut down leaves (tutorial will be shown while the player is on that stage of the experience). If the player is far away from the leaves, he/she can navigate closer with the left controller.
• Unicorn interaction: 1)The player will navigate with the controller close to the unicorn. 2)the player has to make a gesture to the unicorn like caressing him -> move controller/arm from left to right like caressing the unicorn OR make a “patting” hand gesture to the unicorn. 3)The player gets feedback on the screen that the unicorn is ready to be mounted and a selection button is shown on the screen that says “mount”. The player points and shoots for selecting the button depicted on the screen. 4) the screen shows the player on top of the unicorn. 5)the player navigates the unicorn with left and right joysticks in the controllers. Right joystick for moving forward left and right and left joystick for looking around / panning the fov. 6)When the player reaches the destination a button is shown on the screen that says “dismount”, the player points and shoots the button for dismount (like in mount). 7)screen shows player on the ground/terrain next to the unicorn already dismounted 8) the player navigates and continues playing. *) if the player wishes to dismount the unicorn at any point prior to destination for whatever reason there is an emergency dismount button showing up on a screen corner somewhere (or an emergency exit button).

Hello Readers,

This week I focused on working on the mid term critique.

Thank you!

Hello Readers,

This week I focused on beginning my research on the history and symbols of the LGBTQIA+ community.

This research led me to add more ideas to my mood board. It also helped me create a color palette based on the colors in all the flags the community has and guided me to choose creatures and elements of nature based on the plants and creatures that are symbols of the community.

For example, unicorns and rainbows will definitely be part of the experience. Additionally, plants like lavender, gladiolus, green carnation, and lilies will be part of the terrain design in the experience, since they are all flowers strongly linked with the LGBTQIA+ community.

I further advanced my research in the unity asset store and downloaded assets like terrains, flowers, and fairy dust effects that go along with the theme of the experience. Moreover, I saved models, from GooglePoly, of animals, creatures, and other assets that will add to the experience (e.g. a chest, rocks, mythical animals).

Finally, I conducted research on interaction techniques and established a basic hierarchy of my core interactions. For example, the most important interaction in my experience will be moving around the paths (look map of the experience). Another important interaction is throwing rocks and cutting down leaves in order to open new pathways.

Moving forward, I want to focus more on the path map of my experience and start deciding the initial placements of my assets in the experience to make my level design more detailed.

Thank you for reading,

See you next week.