Week seven update:
Week seven we have been taking some time to re-establish our lines of communication. We realized after meeting with faculty for Quarters that we have a lot of opportunity to streamline our development process. So moving forward, we have developed a master diagram to keep everybody on the same page regarding the experiences and tests we plan to run as part of this project. In addition to this, we have established more concrete methods of communication regarding accountability and task responsibility, as well as who to talk to when work is blocked.
(Purple is part of the experience guided by the host, pink is for the guest, and blue is when both users are involved)
Our design team has been working in tandem with our programmers to get the teleportation in and out of the VR space implemented to a testable state for us next week. This idea is based off of the concept of making the foyer (defined as space in between the guest’s home and host’s home) more permanent and defined. In a way, the teleporter as an object in the virtual space establishes a more clear threshold between virtual spaces, providing a definite beginning and end to the home experience.
We have also begun to get our first art assets in from the outsourced artist:
For our virtual prototype, coming up on the end of this week we have been working on implementing a simple UI system as an invite mechanism; a television that goes above the fireplace which the host can use to invite a guest. This will not only consolidate all our UI into one area, but will also be more immersive than floating text in the space. It also provides us with the opportunity to display messages “in-context” to the users.
This week we have also experimented using the Vive Wireless Adapter for our experience. After taking a little time to set it up (it requires a separate network card), we tried running both Beatsaber and our two player Hearth experience in it. Overall, the Wireless Adapter is a huge plus for convenience and comfort, but it detracts too much from the resolution and framerate of our experience for us to justify using.