Anchored Memories
Anchored Memories is a VR experience about sea level rising in which we are testing the effects of haptics on the overall experience. This is a project produced by the Texas Immersive Institute at UT Austin. I am the tech intern at the lab and am currently working on the design and implementation of the haptics in the experience.
During the Anchored Memories experience, you are going through different stages of the protagonist’s life and seeing the impact of sea level rising on their home. The experience takes place on the porch of a house right on the beach. It is a work in progress so I will share a couple of early design challenges below and will continue to make updates as we progress.
Roles
- Haptic Designer
- VR Support/Expertise
Design Challenge
Rain particles transferring to vest
I was asked to use a haptics vest to have participant feel like they were out in the rain. I didn’t want to make a repeating haptics pattern that would play on a loop because I didn’t want people to notice it being repetitive. So I opted to use the existing rain particles and their colliders and transferred the position of the collision to a point on the vest. When I started with Unreal Engine, designing the collisions was very complex. But when we switched to Unity, the process became a lot smoother.
It was also challenging because I had the rain falling straight down, but there were no haptic actuators on the head or shoulders. So I programmed the particles to fall at an angle, simulating wind blowing. Then the particles went into the person’s chest instead of falling straight down.
Design Challenge
Hand tracking with haptic gloves
For the experience, the user would need to wear haptic gloves and this caused an issue with the VR hand tracking.
When testing with the haptic gloves on to grab and interact with objects, the tracking would lose the hand. This was an issue because the color of the haptic gloves blended into the background and you couldn’t extend your arm far enough to participate in the experience without losing tracking.
It took quite a bit of testing to figure out that the issue was the contrast between the glove and the background. So once I figured that out, I realized that the room we do the experience in will need to be very well lit or have really good contrast with the glove.