‘Seasons’. A Virtual Campsite Adventure.
Hillary Chong is a current student at QUT working with Deb in the studio and some researchers from Griffith University (Ali Lakhami) and the Hopkins Centre for Rehabilitation (Sally Stewart). Hilary has made some terrific progress with her VR experience for people with limited motor skills... particularly for those with varying levels of spinal cord injury.
Due to the limited mobility of the player, Hillary has concentrated on a seated experience with some interaction. And found that a ‘camping’ scene provided a terrific excuse to do just this. Adding to this adventure, Hillary came up with a plan to enable the player to customise the terrain according to seasonal selections!
One of the most satisfying things to do in VR is to play around with the virtual physics. So to keep the player rooted in the VR world they should be able to interact with the objects around them. The theme that I want to begin with would be camping. So things like a tent and campfire are necessary, where the player can roast marshmallows on the fire. If there is water the player can throw stones across.
You can see more about her progress and research on her project blog: https://codingworlds.tumblr.com/tagged/research
Please note that Hilary has used assets from Unity to develop this prototype to test her concept and interaction design before committing to producing unique content.