RESTLESS SLEEP
Restless Sleep was the first epic project in Semester in Alternate Realities. After our research, we discovered that medically induced comatose patients are still more or less aware of what's happening around them. Furthermore, our research shows that depending on who they hear, it will influence what dreams they have regarding how they feel about the person they hear. If they hear someone familiar, they will dream of mountains and beautiful scenery. Anyone else, however, and they dream of abandoned creepy buildings. After realizing this my group and I decided to create a Virtual Reality experience reflecting on what a potential Comatose patent would experience by using an Oculus Go headset.
STATIC DEMO
Here is a static camera perspective of the experience. My part in this project was to make the User experience and all the special effects. The fading in and out, the constant motion of the player, making sure it was smooth to prevent any motion sickness, the fire and water effects on the screen. Once my group members finished making the rooms in Maya I placed them all in the scene and put the pieces together. The main problems that I needed to overcome were timing everything together and having the special effects activate at certain times. There were points that the camera started floating off-screen. I didn't realize at the time that the camera had an effect on collisions and how it sometimes activated certain triggers multiple times. I removed the mesh colliders while also placing fail-safe triggers so that if the camera started floating away, it would reset itself.
SHOWCASE DAY
On showcase, we presented our project to the students and faculty of SFU. To strengthen the immersion my team and I dressed up as medical staffers claiming to test out our newest product. The "product" was that the Oculus Go headset is a conscious transfer device that allowed users to view the point of a comatose patient. They would see what they see and feel what they would feel. Once they laid on the mattress we had for them, we placed the headset on them and watched the experience through my computer. We then had haptics playout such as when the splash of water scene happened, we placed an ice bag on their arm. Afterward, we gave them a questionnaire asking them about their experience.
