VRDD
Link for full VRDD file: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NgbbNULOmKosqxwCmPZStf3XsgI6am7lJXN0jXPxiiY/edit?usp=sharing
Title of project
Invisible war
Slogan
Be Careful; Be prepared; Be Safe; Be Ready to fight #Covid19
Razor
The user acts as a doctor to learn about the knowledge and impact of COVID-19, and to vaccinate people against COVID-19. Users can switch perspectives and act as immune cells in a person's body to eliminate the virus. It offers a chance for users to experience what they would never experience in their lives.
Vision statement & top level summary of your project idea
Invisible War is an immersive experience that puts the user in the shoes of medical personnel that give a vaccine and other medical treatment to humans. Experience how to prevent Covid-19 from a first-person view and also learn about information and history of the different viruses.
Goal of project/Differentiator
We wanna make something special and unique, in the meanwhile waking up some people’s attention on Covid-19. It has been a while since Covid happened all around the world, some people have already decreased their attention on health protection. People in third-world countries are still being seriously impacted by the virus so we wanna evoke people’s attention by acting as the vaccine worker and seeing what they are doing to help save the world. The world is in everyone's hands. VR lets us provide a chance for users to throw into the perspective of medical personnel, with a 360-degree immersive environment and a first-person view as a doctor and immune cells.
Theme(s) of project
Behaviour change, set in 2020 pandemic, educational
The visual style of the project
We will base our project on the hospital. We will build the environment inside and outside of a hospital, patients inside the hospital as interaction use, and also different checkpoints inside the hospital as well. The main inspiration of our project is a VR game called Surgeon Simulator: Experience Reality from steam.
Store Page of Surgeon Simulator: Experience Reality:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/518920/Surgeon_Simulator_Experience_Reality/
Core desired user experience
a) Desired user experience and how your VR experience ideally transforms immersants
We want users to learn how to protect themselves from the virus and also encourage them to get the vaccine ASAP. We want to solidify the idea that the virus is real, even though it is invisible and we can’t see it. The game will do this by showing the user the history of the different popular viruses and how they affected our world, also allowing the user to play as the medical personnel and apply vaccines to patients.
b) How is your project taking advantage of the special affordance and opportunity of VR?
By using VR, users can actually find and "touch" the knowledge checkpoint by themselves using VR. That will strengthen their memory and impression on such knowledge rather than just reading it in the book. We want users to have fun with the VR project, in the meanwhile bringing the classroom into the VR world and so users could also bring something useful back to reality after playing our VR project.
c) Relation to the course design challenge
The main event is to let people learn different knowledge and experience what medical personnel do to patients in terms of Covid-19. Since Covid-19 is still a very unstable thing and people could easily feel bad or even die while infected by the disease. We are trying to use this game to emphasize reality and hope people could do everything they could to avoid and beat the virus.
Introduction
The goal of this project is to educate people and evoke people's attention to the unfinished situation of Covid-19 and continue to protect themselves for the future of society, their family, and themselves. The user will play the role of medical personnel and apply medication treatment including vaccination to the patient. Also, users are going to collect and read the knowledge about different viruses in checkpoints.
Narrative/Story
A patient was sent inside the emergency department. The user has to unlock the door by studying and collecting different knowledge in order to save the patient with medication and vaccinations. After the player vaccinates a person, the player switches perspective and acts as an immune cell in a person's body to eliminate the virus. It offers a chance for users to experience what they would never experience in their lives.
Inspiration Analysis
https://store.steampowered.com/app/475090/Project_Remedium/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/518920/Surgeon_Simulator_Experience_Reality/
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VR mechanics & Physical Rig
Core mechanics
Users will experience our game in the First-Person View of medical personnel, with a VR headset and 2 controllers. The VR head-up display will show all the gameplay to users, and users will control their movement with the 2 controllers on their hands, including grabbing the checkpoint ball and giving medical treatment to the patient.
Secondary mechanics
The number of users will be 1 at a time. There is not any age limitation, but we don’t suggest people with too young or too old play the game as the head-up display might create potential health issues like headaches to those users. Users will enter our special zone with different decorations and posters about our main theme of the game, and start playing. Users should not break anything (unless it has to for example an urgent situation) and should follow all the instructions and orders from our team.
Envisioned physical setup
We use mostly visual and sensing props to set up the place. The main color of our physical venue will be red, as related to the color of blood. Our poster and summary will use red as the background color. Also, to connect with the theme, we have prepared some disease props for example a virus model to hang on the booth and let users feel there is a lot of disease inside the play zone when they enter the venue. One of us will wear a virus costume to help strengthen the mood of the booth. We hope these may help users get into the mood that there is a lot of Covid-19 virus around us before entering the VR game, and also having the very last visual effect and mood before leaving the venue after the game ends.
Locomotion technique
1. Pointing Hand Pattern
Because the Hand Selection pattern has limitations that distance objects are hard to reach in the game. Especially using teleporting to navigate the scene which might give more potential for interaction activities, such as shooting or raycast for selection. Although this will make it easier to choose a distant object, it will make people lose their sense of reality and realize that they are in the VR world. Because in reality, people do not have the ability to fetch things from space.
2. Non-Spatial Control Pattern
Since we are going to have a teleporting method to navigate the scene of our game, as we said above. It’s going to be boring if all interactions use Pointing Hand selection. This means we need new patterns for the audience to control and interact with. Non-Spatial Control Pattern is a good selection since it gives the opportunity for the audience to interact by using gestures and their voice command. For example, if we are going to switch scenes by using a door, then we can have our inspector input a voice command “open the door”. The drawback is that it might have some issues with Oculus recognizing the voice command correctly. So instead of having the one-word command “door”, we need to have a phrase like “open the door”.
Inspiration Analysis
We all know that this is the age of Covid-19. The whole world has been suffering from it for over 2 years. This is the very first semester we go back to school, and we noticed that people are paying less and less attention to Covid-19. Remember, there are still people infected or die even supported with all 2 vaccines. We want to use a unique and fun way to draw the attention of Covid-19 from people, that’s why we are providing a chance for people to give vaccinations and other medical treatment to a patient, and to remind them how important it to take the vaccine or evoking the initial reason they went to take the vaccines. Covid-19 is the main inspiration for our whole project.
News: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/covid-19-update-oct25-1.6224165
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Immersion Frameworks
(a) In what way will your project support immersion, flow and/or presence, etc.?
We are using a first-person perspective to support the immersion and flow. We are aiming to let users think that they are actually medical personnel inside a hospital, with the help of visual and sound effects, and so they could immerse the point of view of medical personnel working under the time of Covid-19, treating patients and at the same time learning knowledge of the virus.
(b) What type of immersion are you focusing most on, and why? How do you plan on using these to support your overall project objectives and desired user experience?
We are focusing on sensory immersion. We used music as well as sound effects to help ease the atmosphere and reflect the action of the user, making users focus on the game in a comfortable and realistic form. Again, our goal is to draw everyone’s attention once again to protect ourselves from Covid-19, that’s why we are making a game as medical personnel and let users feel the perspective of being medical personnel when they see a patient lying on the bed, as well as a visual effect. Using a realistic in-game environment will help provide the mood to the user that they will feel they are actually treating the patient.
(c) Please explain in detail how your team plans on evoking your chosen immersion aspects.
Each of the team members in our team has different work to do in order to successfully evoke the immersion. Bruce was focusing on the physical venue setup and other document stuff. He prepared the props and executive summary to make sure users will have a great first impression when entering our venue; James was focusing on the sound effect and some 3D modeling creation to immerse users the most with audio effect; David was focusing on 3D modeling and make the visual part of the game happened; George was focusing on the storyboard and scene making to make the flow of the game smooth so users can immerse onto the game under a reasonable situation. We are working towards the same goal, which is to create a great game and evoke everyone's attention on the unstable Covid-19.
Appendix A: Documentation of Ideation Process
We wrote down our thoughts and ideas on the computer (sticker) when doing the brainstorm.
Appendix B: Sketches & Misc
VR mechanics & Physical Rig
Core mechanics
Users will experience our game in a First-Person View of a disease, with VR headset and 2 controllers. The VR head up display will show all the gameplay to users, and users will control their movement with the 2 controllers on their hand, including grabbing the blood cell, and infecting the human body.
Secondary mechanics
Number of users will be 1 at a time. There is not any age limitation, but we don’t suggest people with too young or too old playing the game as the head-up display might create potential health issues like headaches to those users. Players will enter our special zone with different decorations about our main theme of the game, and start playing. Players should not break anything (unless it has to for example an urgent situation) and should follow all the instructions and orders from our team.
Envisioned physical setup
At this point, we are planning to use mostly visual and sensing props to set up the place. The main colour of our physical venue will be red, as related to the colour inside a human body (mostly red because of blood). We will use a red towel to make the venue more red. Also, to connect with the theme, we have prepared some disease props to hang on the booth and let players feel there is a lot of disease inside the playzone when they enter the venue. We are also looking to use some soft sticky gel/ jelly to demonstrate the feeling of bacterias inside the human body. We hope these may help players get into the mood of becoming a part of the disease before actually entering the game, and also having the very last visual effect before leaving the venue, after the game ends.
Locomotion technique
1. Pointing Hand Pattern
Because the Hand Selection pattern has limitations that distance objects are hard to reach in the game. Especially using teleporting to navigate the scene which might give more potential for interaction activities, such as shooting or raycast for selection. Although this will make it easier to choose a distant object, it will make people lose their sense of reality and realize that they are in the VR world. Because in reality, people do not have the ability to fetch things from space.
2. Non-Spatial Control Pattern
Since we are going to have a teleporting method to navigate the scene of our game, as we said above. It’s going to be boring if all interactions use Pointing Hand selection. Which means, we need new patterns for the audience to control and interact. Non-Spatial Control Pattern is a good selection since it gives the opportunity for the audience to interact by using gestures and their voice command. For example, if we are going to switch scenes by using a door, then we can have our inspector input a voice command “open the door”. The drawback is that it might have some issue with Oculus recognizing the voice command correctly. So instead of having one word command “door”, we need to have a phrase like “open the door”.
Inspiration Analysis
We all know that this is the age of Covid-19. The whole world has been suffering from it for over 2 years. This is the very first semester we go back to school, and we noticed that people are paying less and less attention on Covid. Remember, there are still people infected or die even supported with all 2 vaccines. We want to use a different way to draw attention of Covid from people, that’s why we are making an inside-human world for players to see what will happen if a disease enters the human body. Covid-19 is the main inspiration to our whole project.
News: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/covid-19-update-oct25-1.6224165
Why Your Project is Innovative
(a) What’s new/interesting/cool/exciting/different about your project?
This game will provide a chance for users to apply medication like vaccination to patients. This can give most users another aspect and angle to involve in the pandemic. Also, users can also learn different knowledge about viruses and Covid-19 within the game from the checkpoint, so it is not only limited within the game, but also could bring something back to reality and apply them to daily life and save society.
(b) Why is your project relevant? How does it provide a meaningful / desirable experience to the users?
We have been thinking of several ways to present the game and message. We believe that to make it meaningful, attractive, and fun, using the first-person perspective always gives the user the biggest impact and experience to them as they actually “see” what the character sees. In this case, the user can “see” what medical personnel do when dealing with patients under Covid-19. Of course, we won't be able to fully simulate a realistic situation, but we will be able to give the user a look at what's happening at an angle they can't normally see.
(c) For your showcase, what would be your main “selling points”? Why should anyone care about it?
Our main selling point will be Covid-19 as well as providing a unique way to explore the world. We are providing a chance for users to become a doctor and see what could be done to patients under Covid-19. Everyone should care about it because Covid-19 is just an everyone-related thing in today’s world. As I mentioned, we noticed that people are just getting less attention to protecting themselves. People should care about it because it is about everyone’s life including themselves.