Virtual Reality

CPRVR is a health training virtual reality app that aims to teach the basics of performing CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) in a playful and accessible environment.

The past year was challenging for many people in different ways. Not only the fact of being separated from beloved ones due to different restrictions but also the limited opportunities to free your mind after a stressful day and stimulate yourself by a new experience. The Virtual Reality experience “Acid mind” brings in new visual and audio stimuli to your everyday life. Explore a world of colours in an interactive and relaxing way - safe, legal and without side effects - immersed in the virtual world.

The application is using the latest hand tracking technology and combines different techniques in shaders, VFX and sound to a playful experience. It can be seen as a virtual exhibition of interactive art pieces, manipulated by the user and generated with the Unity engine.

We learned to combine techniques of Virtual Reality, hand tracking, shaders, VFX as well as sound reactive shaders and VFX. For us it was a huge success what we measure with our ability of collaborating on the project via Teams and in person. We followed an MVP (minimal viable product) approach by combining individual developed pieces to one scene. As soon as one teammate found out exciting approaches like a sound reactive shader we also combined it with techniques from the other teammate.

Ascend VR is a meditation application designed for a single HMD user that runs for approximately 10 minutes. It takes the user on a guided meditation, immersing the user in responsive virtual environments with 360 graphics, spatial sounds and haptic feedback.

Throughout the experience, the user is guided by a voice narration that delivers breathing and visualisation exercises. The user is guided through 4 scenes: Void, Ocean, Sky and Space. Beginning as a fish swimming to the surface of the ocean, then a seabird flying towards the horizon and finally a celestial entity in space, the journey of ascension is both physical and spiritual.

Targeting an audience who experience difficulties with traditional meditation methods, Ascend VR helps the user quickly settle into a meditative state through its seamless combination of immersive qualities and meditation techniques. Through the narrative, the user is meaningfully connected to virtual environment and more likely to achieve mindfulness.

‘Non-Euclidean Room Tour’ is a physical walking and controller-free VR experience prototype that performs a time shift as well as a space transition simultaneously. Users can find any living room size space and experience interactions with their body, like playing instruments with their own hands and walking with feet.

Hands are the principal interaction, also the more difficult parts to work out. Based on Oculus Quest’s hand tracking package, hand tracking and gesture detection were implemented. Even though there is no physics haptics, prompt feedback gives different levels of tactile illusion to different testers. By introducing the concept of ‘Non-Euclidean’, the virtual room was compressed by 3 spaces to fit into one room-scale experience. The implementation was technically based on the stencil buffer. It is designed to implement impossible geometry illusion in the maze, also as a solution that solves the space problem posed by walking. Functions in my previous project are redesigned, hand menu, grabbing, drawing and portals are upgraded to more exquisite interactions.

The goal of this prototype is to give users a more intuitive feeling. During the process, two questions arise: Is walking the locomotion way that will not break the illusion? To what extent walking instead of the controller movement can significantly reduce symptoms of motion sickness? This project gives a very positive answer. The project practices the concept of a potentially infinite world illusion. In terms of haptics, a Wireality with worn multi-string hands haptics potentially is a good solution for the project afterwards.

Meet at your home – worldwide.

Covid kept us away from spending our time with our beloved ones. With House Party VR you can invite your friends to your digital – real home and bring back the feeling you may missed for a long time. This application is a social-VR multiplayer concept. The user scans in his real environment by photogrammetry and within seconds he is able to invite friends from all over the world to it. By placing games and interactivities the user can benefit of all affordances from Virtual Reality. So: let’s start the party and connect!

For this application I used an – for me – entire new game engine (Unreal Engine) what was a huge benefit for me in terms of graphic quality and development speed. For coding I learned the node based coding of blueprints what felt much faster compared to a Unity development. I tried out different available photogrammetry apps that are working with the lidar scanner and received low poly model as well as high detailed output (e.g. with Reality Capture). I assume that this proposed workflow of bringing in real environment within your own virtual space will become soon a standard for social AR/VR (especially with further software developments with the Lidar scanner software).

This experience is aiming to raise awareness among the audience. Plastic pollution is one of the biggest problems of society. I do believe that by using a VR medium and unconventional storytelling the issue can become more approachable and understandable by the audience. Data visualization in dimensional space is a powerful way to show abstract ideas in order to create awareness of what stands behind the numbers. Using non-linear storytelling the user is free to explore the space, interact with the objects and live within the narration, rather than be a passive recipient. From the technical point of view, the precision of on trigger events was very important, so the user can understand the message clearly without any disruption. I experimented with and implemented Nvida Flex Physics Beta for real-time interactions with particle-based simulation for the "plastic ocean" bubbles, that intensify the subliminal message.

Augmented Reality

“John“ is a subconscious non-smoking campaign in Augmented Reality. Your smoking buddy called John appears on a cigarette box as a virtual character by hovering the package with a AR supported device. He seems gruff and curt, but he is actually a very kind person but also has a heavy smoking problem.

After telling you a bad joke or stories about his smoking, John is asking you for another cigarette. The user can press a button to comply with his request. The user’s action instantly changes John’s health status what is reflected on a health bar on the top and an increased coughing by John. After several bad jokes given cigarettes by the user and an increasing cough, John dies in the end by giving John ”just one other cigarette“.

‘Sentient Aura’ is an interactive AR facial masking project experimenting on the relationship between human emotions conveyed by various facial expressions and computer-generated 3d sculptures as facial masks. In the modern age, the non-stopping acceleration and expansion of our social sphere has gradually deprived us of our ability to concentrate on, take care of or even notice other people’s emotions. This project intends to create a series of filters that could amplify our emotion, hence arouse our empathy during a face-to-face communication. As if in the post-human world, empathy becomes the most important element during any sort of communication. ‘Sentient Aura’, therefore, is a tentative approach to speculate on the futuristic form of face-to-face communication.

We have encoded several overarching emotions, such as happiness, anger, surprise, sadness and indifference into the animated facial masks.The dynamic flow of the emotional energy is reflected by three specially sculpted post-humanist masks that are animated simultaneously with different facial expressions, partially veiling the real face while exposing our emotion in externalised forms. The 3D masks are inspired by oriental warriors’ masks and animals such as lizards, octopus and alien-like critters. In the post-humanist era, cybernetic symbiosis with plants and other animals has prevailed as the mainstream.

Through the technology of AR, a real-time masking process is enabled to vividly illustrate a 3D sculpted mask over a real human face. It uses AR as the intermediary to bridge an imaginary posthuman world and the current reality.