Oculus Launchpad Experience 0.6

by Anthony
in Oculus Launchpad Research Thoughts
posted August 14, 2018

Introduction

This week has been a period of reflection and project clarity, while also building small but necessary components with the team. Trying to determine the precise objectives of the project while building it is exhausting; but fortunately this week has involved visiting beautiful Quebec forests and lakes to spend time with family. Gazing upon Mars’ reflection scattered across a rippling black lake is amazing …

Past

The team has been slowly piecing together all the components we require for building this WebVR platform. There has been a great deal of learning and enjoyment from each other as we bring our respective expertise into the fold.

Image: Being inspired by nature’s beauty, and our relationship with it. My daughter and wife swimming in a Quebec lake during the early morning fog.

Present

This week our team has accomplished the following:

further refinement of the “fire hub world” so that there are fewer artificial boundaries. “Invisible walls” are not fun in games and are also not fun in VR.
The front-end team has started refining the front-end administration side with better development tools/libraries such as PUG templating and SASS styling.
The back-end team has created a janus service on our AWS server so that we do not have start/restart the Janus WebRTC server whenever our terminal windows close.
The story team has been working on documenting the areas pertaining to their story by writing it out, and capturing photos and sketches of the locations we are going to recreate in VR.
Have further fleshed out our “project/business plan” for the mid-point checkin and feedback Oculus offers for the Launchpad program.
I have spent some time in nature this week with my family bouncing ideas on the project to non-technical family members and getting some interesting feedback. They have also tried the OculusGO and it has been interesting to gauge their reactions to it (very positive and very surprised by how easy it is to put on).

Being in nature, and talking with our storyteller and his thoughts on life’s inter-connectedness, has also allowed me to further reflect on socialVR and our take on it from a “socio-environmental connectivism” foundation. Everything is connected – we cannot remove emotion, environments, each other, and ourselves from our learning. I am still trying to figure out how to precisely reflect this but I am confident that prototyping will show a clearer way forward.

Talking about the project with my family has also been helpful. I also had to present a short presentation my research this year, which has included this current journey, at an event the research group I belong to put on this week.

Image: Presenting my research while my daughter “helps”. Credit to the img_carleton group for the photo.

Future

I am going to focus on creating greater agency within these virtual worlds through embodied interactions, with a plan to further explore more non-vocal communication methods.