A museum VR project: a historical space that had to become an experience rather than a tour with text panels.
Objectives
- Turn historical and technical information into an interactive experience
- Prototype the VR mechanics and implement their final versions
My contribution
- Chose the project’s tech stack
- Designed and implemented the interaction mechanics
- Handled the entire technical implementation in Unity
- Integrated content from other team members: models, video, documents, audio
- Created interactive audio in FMOD
- Optimized the project for the Quest 2 headset
Key decisions
- An interactive environment: items to pick up, lockers to open, monologues playing through a telephone receiver, and objects that trigger cutscenes.
- A strictly linear main story, but with the player controlling the pace. Additional content can be found around the space.
- Unity as the engine. We considered Unigine but dropped it: in practice, iteration was faster in Unity and features were quicker to integrate.
Outcome
Shown at exhibitions, conferences, and festivals. Users responded well to the concept, the space, and the story. Some had trouble finding their way around.
What I’d do differently
The project’s main problem is underdeveloped navigation. Users sometimes lost the thread of the story and couldn’t figure out where to go. Today I’d add more cues and guidance along the golden path.