Initial Attempts at Virtual Reality
Escaping the real world for a moment
Another late night in the studio. This week I started playing with the HTC Vive. Something I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time. And it was definitely worth the wait.
Setting up the Vive was not very troublesome. Just plugging the right cords into the right ports and setting up the two sensors. The sensors are on stands and act as sort of a “base area” for your experience. They create a virtual cube that you can’t really leave. The headset and the controllers act as a means to interact with the virtual world.
To be honest I excepted the set-up to be a lot more difficult than it was. Initially, once I got the green light from the headset and the controllers, I opened up Unity on the provided Razer laptops. There were a lot of old project files from past students that I explored. The headset almost immediately started to replicate what was on the screen in Unity. For now, it was just a blank canvas, but nevertheless I was excited that I got something to show up inside the headset.
Continuing to poke around, I opened up SteamVR. It looked like past students had downloaded quite a few games on Steam. This is where the real fun began. Dave and I began to try out different games, starting with Google Earth VR. Really simple interactions, but a blast. I got to explore Neuschwanstein Castle from our cozy Boulder studio. I could see how Google just implemented all their information and stitched images into a 360° space.
The next game we tried out was called “The Cubicle”. This was more of a short story interactive game, set in an Office Space style cubicle. I won’t say too much more, but the story gets darker and darker as you interact and play with space more. Really cool stuff.
The final Steam game we played, and by far the most fun, was VRChat. I’ve seen this game floating around the internet, so I had an idea of what it was when I started it up. It’s essentially a virtual “chat room” where people from all over the world can come and interact with each other. Strangers can talk, exchange gestures, and customize their avatars. I had a good time talking to internet folk, who were surprisingly kind, answering all my questions about how to use VRChat.
I was decently familiar with how VR works before setting it up for myself tonight, but I think even for someone who had never used it before, the controls would be relatively intuitive. Fun to use, and a great resource to have around.
In the future
For my Critical Marking project for the fall, I am creating a public speaking environment in VR. This was a great entry point for me, as I really didn’t much of an idea of what I was getting into. I now know how simple it is to access custom Unity files through the Vive and to change your environment. I’m looking forward to tackling this project as the semester goes on.
