Night at the Museum VR project
This project was quite challenging, as it uses all the previous lessons to create something from scratch. The good news is that my subject matter (VR uses in Aerospace) is something I’m currently doing at work, so that part was already well thought out. The difficulty was putting those ideas into Unity. One aspect that I did do, was reuse assets from prior projects, namely the orbs from the Puzzler project. I needed to change some things, but it was nice to be able to do that.
The aerospace industry is ripe with benefits from VR, and I chose the 5 required by this project as a sampling of potential use cases for this technology. We believe that this technology can be used in multiple use cases, in many different aspects of VR, and not only VR, but MR and AR as well. I go into a little more details below for each of the scenes.
Design Process
The design process went through a number of iterations, starting with some quick drawings as to the layout, one main screen, with 5 separate scenes representing the 5 areas of the museum. Taking my knowledge and research of the industry, I chose 5 different areas that we are either working on, or would like to work on in the VR space. These are described in a bit more detail below, next we defined the purpose and persona.
Sketches:


In defining the purpose of the application:
“Night at the Museum is a mobile VR application showcasing some of the use cases for VR in the aerospace industry.”
Next I defined the persona of the end user:
Persona:
Name: Samantha Cook
Age: 30
Occupation: mechanical engineer
Quote: “I want to use immersive technology to lower risks and cost, as well as make spatial computing a reality”
Notes:
As a mechanical design engineer, she is always looking to improve design reviews, and sharing her ideas about what she is building. She is motivated, highly intelligent, and willing to try new things. She is quite experienced with all forms of VR/AR/MR and likes the idea of viewing her CAD drawings in VR!
Main scene:
I wanted the main scene to have a sense of wonder, but not cause motion sickness, so instead of standing in orbit around the earth, I put a black textured platform there. The idea of being in outer space resonates with the aerospace industry, and that is how I wanted to start.

Station1: Mechanical design review
One big example of VR in aerospace, is the idea of an engineer bringing their CAD model into VR during any stage of the design phase. This technique is not quite straight forward yet, but with a relatively simple workflow, bringing in models to view in VR isn’t that bad. This scene is an overly simplified example of that.

Station2: Critical operations
Being able to practice a complex set of critical operations in a sequence of putting together a spacecraft could be much easier if the technician could try it out first in VR, or even AR in some cases. Being able to see the tools being used and the equipment in real scale before trying it for real could be a huge risk reduction, and a great learning experience.

Station3: Marketing
Showing who we are, and what we do at any number of conferences, not only can showcase a forward thinking company, but sets it apart from competitors with some really cool new tech. Not only showing how we do things, but that it’s a great place to work on the latest technology.

Station4: Collaboration
Being able to collaborate across campus, or even across state/international boundaries could be a new way of having a conference call. Our idea is to share ideas, CAD models, in real time with a multi-user environment allowing for a more clear visualization showcasing changes, etc.

Station5: Data visualization
Data visualization is a somewhat unknown in this new medium. How would things look if you could walk around a point cloud environment? What new patterns could be discovered by other types of data visualization? Being able to walk around in a point cloud is a very interesting experience, and has us excited for how this technology might expand in VR.

User Testing
In initial user testing, a couple of things popped up. First that the objects in the various scenes where visible with the UI screen, and made it look weird. Second was that every time it went back to the main scene that start UI shows. Another issue was lack of sound anywhere, even though early on I knew that. To fix the mix of objects and UI, I hid scene objects while the UI panel was shown, and upon clicking OK, hid the canvas, and turned on the scene objects. For the sound, I added feedback from clicking on the orbs, as well as the panel. I also added ambient sound in all of the 5 stations. The entry panel issue was quite challenging, but finally figured out how to utilize “dontdestroyonload” and have some ambient sound loop in the main scene.
Further user testing indicated that the Text in the panels seemed too close, and the globe in the marketing scene seemed out of place, so I moved the text panels back, and removed the globe in the final project.
One more round of user testing indicated that it would be nice to be a little closer to the models in the different scenes, give a bit more instruction on the first scene as to what to, and add more sound to other scenes.






Break down of final piece
This was a very complicated project, and under a bit of time constraint. It was a great challenge, and having more time, I would have built out each of the scenes with more objects, better lighting, and more detail, but I believe I got a small part of the message across, which was how VR might help in the aerospace industry, not only in the near term, but in the future as well.
Final video of gameplay in the Unity dev environment. Click the below link to play the video:
Conclusion
I believe that this new medium of VR/AR/MR has some great potential in the aerospace market, and this project is just a small taste of the many use cases available. The possibilities are endless, as the technology gets better, cheaper, and the tools to make the content are quicker, and better. I believe this medium will help lower costs, reduce risk, and really show off the potential of not only the company that uses it, but the products they produce as well.
