‘Memento Space’_VR Experience
Concept
The movie Memento directed by Christopher Nolan adopted a unique narration method that positive sequences and flashbacks interweaving with each other and Finally converge on the turning point of the story. By this means the viewer’s perception of time is obscured.
Just as time and space are parallel dimensions, I carefully studied Nolan’s narration method and got Inspiration from it. In the conceptual space design, I uniform indoor and outdoor space intertwined, and organize streamline in the indoor and outdoor interwoven topological grid. By this means, the viewer’s perception of indoor and outdoor is confused.
Design
- Space Design: To create a spatial experience in which the interior and exterior spaces intertwined in the design, I studied the figure-ground relation, and through the method of procedural content generation, I first defined the local indoor and outdoor relationship (corresponding to the local figure-ground relation), and then through the spiral way, I expand the local spatial relationship, and adjust it to form the final indoor and outdoor interlaced space (corresponding to the whole figure-ground relation to form a balance).
- VR Design: There is no doubt that such a conceptual architectural design is impossible to have an opportunity to be built. Even if such an interesting spatial experience is realized in the design, it cannot be truly experienced and perceived by people. But VR Technology provides such an opportunity, so I have always had a strong desire to implement such a spatial experience in virtual reality and get feedback from the users’ experience. On the one hand, feedback from users is the best way to judge whether I realized such a space concept, and on the other hand, I hope that the conceptual architecture that cannot be built could be realized in another way. So in the undergraduate HCI course, I took last semester, I implemented a Web VR experience with Aframe. But the webVR tool itself has a lot of limitations. One of the big problems is the limitation on the size of the model. I remembered that in the final version with Aframe, I had to trim my model to less than 10M to be successfully imported. And the way Aframe links png material in code, etc., also causes a lot of limitations for the final VR experience. So in the final project of this semester, I chose to use the more complex tool Unity to better implement this VR design. I also raised questions about different VR experiences with the two platforms in user testing, which I will discuss later.
Prototype
- A-frame Version: https://hci-project-5.glitch.me. In the HCI course of the last semester, due to time constraints, the A-frame VR has many problems. For example, how the viewer moves in the VR space, we have not solved this problem in WebVR. So at the time, our submitted video is still based on a web browser, through the mouse and keyboard to achieve viewer and perspective movement. However, such a web VR is like a boring Sketchup model for me.
In this record video, we can see that when we open this webVR on the phone, we can’t move, we can only experience the space of this viewpoint.
- Unity Version: As Unity is a more complex and complete tool, I was first surprised by its real-time rendering capabilities. In the first stage, I did not implement the conversion of the unity scene to the VR of the mobile phone. As you can see in this record video, I solved the problem of moving in the unity scene at first. I used a Unity package for the path.
Then in this version of April 10th, I used the google cardboard unity VR package, which gave me the method to further install the VR App on mobile phone via Xcode. But this test version has a lot of problems, such as the default path movement and google cardboard unity VR package’s conflicts. In this version, the location where users can move in VR is very limited. And the perspective of this version is also very strange, the scene is more distorted than my expectation.
In the version developed on April 20th, you can see from the recorded video that I have achieved a lot of improvements. The first improvement is about the scene in unity. I re-edited the original SketchUp model and adjusted the material imported into unity. Then I add some trees in the unity assets store to the scene. And I also selected the sky package from the assets store and imported it into my unity scene. After repeated adjustments, this version of the scene effect has a more virtual reality feeling. What’s more, in this version, I solved the biggest technical problem. I abandoned the use of the unity path package (whose conflict with google cardboard unity VR package can not be resolved), and instead, I used the method of binding the camera on an object and then presetting the target positions of movement for the object to achieve the movement of the viewer in VR experience. On the exported mobile app, the basic way of interaction is to touch the phone screen to decide the move or pause of the viewer in the scene.
Final Product
To make this Unity developed VR App more complete, I made further improvements after the April 20th version. The first improvement is adding a woman with red clothes into the scene, which will bring more fun to the VR experience of users, encountering this mysterious woman with red clothes in different positions. On the other hand, I added the sound into the app. The background music in the previous record video is added later. Adding the environment music directly in the unity developed App can make the users’ experience more immersive. Meanwhile, to make it a complete mobile phone VR APP, I designed a unique logo, the prototype of which comes from Memento’s movie poster. Besides, to make a natural transition for the app’s user experience, I added a logo image displaying in black space before the start of the VR scene, and then transitioned to the complete scene and music environment.
Github Repository For Final Version Unity Project Assets: https://github.com/wmjpillow/-Memento-Space-VR
Github Repository For Xcode to build the IOS VR APP: https://github.com/wmjpillow/-Memento-Space-VR-Xcode
User Testing
After developing it into a complete app, I created a google questionnaire for user testing. On the one hand, this questionnaire is to test whether the original concept of the VR APP is experienced and understood by the users, and on the other hand, I want to compare it with similar independent games to see if there is any possibility to develop the APP further.
I tested it with more than 10 users and get some feedback.
Conclusion
- For the current APP, all of them like the VR experience and they do agree that the music makes their experience more immersive. (Although some of the users complained that the music sounds a little horrible.)
- For the concept of the VR experience, most of them almost understand the idea and feel fragmented and infinite. But they also complained about that because similar scenes feel a little boring.
- All of the users suggested that I should add more interaction in the VR experience instead of simply touch to move or not. Interaction indeed will bring more interest but Google Cardboard VR might be a little constrained in that.
- Almost all of the users suggested that I should somehow change the way of the viewer’s movement to make them more comfortable. Because they seem to have to move backward in some situations and that made them dizzy.
Future Work
According to user feedback, this VR experience has the potential to be further developed into a VR game. It is possible that borrowing ideas from the indie game Framed, adding some stories beyond the fragmentation, and stitch together the stories of different spatial experiences. But the most important is that, I need to add more interactive means to make this VR APP more interesting and fun. Further development will bring more technical challenges, and I will find opportunities to continue to develop this project further.
