This week was a big week for Magic Leap. An update was released that featured headset-to-device streaming. While technically still in Beta, this is a huge boost to our group’s ability to efficiently share information. Instead of having each team member to put the headset on to experience something, we can stream a video feed to a smartphone and mirror that on our project room’s big screen. This update coincides with one of this week’s major events, Playtest Day. Playtest Day is one of our few opportunities to have individuals outside of the ETC to test our experience and provide us with valuable data, including the following:

How clear was the story?

How intuitive was the stamping mechanism?

Did the guest understand their purpose in the story?

And ultimately, What were some areas of confusion?

The results of the playtests will help us judge if the mechanics we implemented and the story we created are being conveyed and understood.

In order to test, we were able to create a condensed, yet complete, version of our experience. It features a beginning with the guest being introduced to the world and their workspace, followed by their first encounter with Weird Ghost, a complete interaction with the first ghost Juicy, as well as the finale we had created the weeks prior.

This brings us to an important point: Our experience is heavily dialogue based, so we need talented individuals who can bring out the subtleties of the script. Thankfully, the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama had a number of actors who were able to help us. We spent an evening recording all of the dialogue lines, with our storywriter Kate’s direction.

And what a difference that made! Being able to match the existing visuals we had with the newly recorded audio brought all of the characters to life, and helped our animators proceed with a more accurately stylized approach in mind.

We hope that the new build, featuring a full story arch, more art assets, and actual dialogue will help us have a much better understanding of what else we need to work on post Playtest Day.