Real and Virtual Worlds : Week 10

Readings, podcasts

New Directions in Mobile Media and Performanc

Thoughts : Narrative of VR / AR content, as my own experience, it seems that VR / AR are more and more coming to usage as support in real life such as 3D content creating and training programs, and also seems to be more useful in those directions than a more visual and vocal imersive in game design : it lacks support for narrative and it lacks more ways of presence of narrative.

It is not saying that VR / AR are less promised in game design in the future, I am just doubting that how VR / AR should help players experience the narrative side, other than the sound and visual side. We don’t have many narratively good and solid VR / AR content for now and we do need one, such as ALYX. Yes it is a success VR game and it does well in narrative side already, but still the most negative feedback of this game is that : it sometimes still feels like a still shooting game while normal content is way beyond this. However , it has already did the best to break the wall between the audience and the media content and tried quite a lot of solution including a set of narrative design for VR content, so my opinion is that, as we still lack hardware based interactions on this era, and VR game design should not only be a accumulation of new interaction methods based on existing input methods, it should include narratives. Take narrative into account.

Grab a pen and write in AYLX

Besides the other content of this segment of content, I still have a lot of question: First, about Trendscendence — Prototype , I understand what does it directly feel in the program, but I do want to know the intend of this project, or what does the host want to let the participants know or what does he wanna prove, especially about performance?

Also, as we see the function of AR evolutes, we have already seen many AR content in reality such as QR code which is the most wide one, and we also know that this platform still have it’s limit when it comes to Mobile Media, it also questions me that aside from scan some certain stuff and have a vivid knowledge for something abstract literally, what is it up to in the future? It is designed to let your machine do the basic information convert such as QR code, or let creators understand something more easily rather than plane words, but I can hardly see more potential usage or performance other than these two direction. I used to see one very interesting useage which helps driving, and it is like the software reads your mind by read your eye movement and pop up the content you need, and it seems it is still under the performance of known AR function and it is nothing new in general. (What else can AR do?)

Museum of other realities

It was good experience to see the development and useage of VR in a VR software, and it was well introduced and presented.

I did not experience the online gallery, only the offline ones, and what impressed me most is this painting, because it has nothing verbal, only introducing itself with pure art, and the feeling to enjoy it 360° was really awesome: I can see the flow of the painting, the heat and cold, the contract, it was not only a forest, it represents for something beyond imagination, and impossible to feel similar in 2D space. Great.

Voices of VR

It was troublesome to understand sound design in VR but I guess it has a goal to let the environment interacts with each other like it does in real life and I am literaly know zero knowledge about this part, as I am not sound designer or hard core coder…

But yes, technical audio matters in game design, should be able to give the player more hint about the environment and know a little about what is gonna happen seconds later. It should be also very important to let the player feel they were really there. And to the techique side, sorry I learnt nothing I just can’t understand at all😂.

Project Development

Driving prototype : I spent some time with Chris and I managed to make a prototype with the driving and It worked.