I used the Google Cardboard to view a VR 360 short movie called “Asteroids!” by baobab. In this short movie, the user is virtually placed in the center of a spaceship and depending on the view, the user can see the outside (space) from the large window, or the user can see the interior of the spaceship. There is a storyline within this six-minute clip, which starts off with a peaceful scene, and then the characters face an emergency situation, one of the characters (the mom?) faces death but regains life, and the family is back to their happy norm.

The crucial difference of this 360 video from any other one-side video is that the user is the one who chooses which part of the scene he/she decides to watch. For example, when five dirt pieces hit the window of the spaceship, it was up to the user (in this case, myself) to turn around and see what had hit the window. What I mean by this is that when I was watching this scene, I was looking at the interaction of the three characters facing the interior of the ship. Suddenly, I heard a sound of something hitting the window, and so I turned around with my VR headset and saw that five pieces of green dirt had hit the window. In a sense, I turned around instantaneously when I head that sound out of curiosity, but some user may not even bother turning around, which would mean that that user will not witness that five green dirt on the window.

At times when I was watching this video, I was lost as to where the action was taking place. For example, there would be an action taking place at a certain location and then it would jump to a different location. Those times, I had to do a 360 turn around to figure out where the next scene was taking place. I was watching this video in my room on my bed and so it was easy for me to do a 360-degree turn. However, if I had been watching this video in a smaller and limited space, my actions would have been different. Therefore, I realized that I must secure a free 360-degree space before watching or doing any 360 VR or AR experience.

During the week I tried out the Google Earth VR online, where you can experience varies views from different locations in the world by using the mode “walking” or “flying”. When you are “walking” in the scene all you need is just a VR headset, while in order to experience “flying” you need an extra handle as well to navigate the directions.

Here are two brief clips showing how it looks on a PC:

After experiencing the online Google Earth VR and looking at the videos of how it will work in a headset with a more immersive experience, I deepened my understanding of how the space works in terms of communications information that the way to communicate influence the user experience and the level of immersion. Take Google Earth for example, when the communication means is simply drag the mouse to rotate the 360 degree scene on a PC, it gives you less sense of reality since the user don’t see the instant reaction from the scene they are watching. While when the user is using a headset and maybe a handle to experience it, it feels more like reality since the user is asked to take less effort (no need to drag the mouse) and the scene will give you instant feedback and interactions as the user is moving the head around.

What’s more, beyond the communication means, the information included in the VR experience also matters. Wether the view is from the perspective from above (the god’s view), or it’s a fixed camera point in the middle of a 360 degree scene, the position from which the view starts really influence the level of immersion, or the level of how realistic it is. However, although the Google Earth VR in the flying mode gives you the perspective to see the world from above, it does provides you with the contextual background that you are in an aircraft, which makes more sense and smoothens the user experience.

I decided to try out an app called VR Diving where you can choose from a set of different underwater environments to experience either just on your phone or with Google Cardboard:

I chose the first one, Ocean Shark Shipwreck 360, to review. Here are a few screenshots of the experience, taken from the normal phone view rather than the Google Cardboard view for ease of viewing on the computer:

Ignore the quality setting – I set it to “high” later on but there wasn’t really any noticeable difference.

This 360 video showed different clips of sharks and fish swimming underwater. When you tilt your head down, you can either see coral or darker blue ocean water, and when you tilt your head up you can see the sun shining onto the surface of the water. While the videos appear to be taken from real life, the sound does not – there is a creepy sort of music along with sounds that sound like bubbles.

I’m a little confused as to what the purpose of this environment is. On one hand, it could be a cool way to represent what scuba diving is like. On the other hand, it could be meant to scare the user because of the music and, at one point, one of the sharks eats the camera. However, this experience was an odd mix of the two. It wasn’t quite like a realistic representation of scuba diving because of the strange sound effects and also because of the fact that every so often, the video would suddenly transition to a slightly different scene with an unnatural fade in/out effect. It also wasn’t quite scary, because the bubbly noises distracted from the scary music, and most of the sharks didn’t seem to mind the user.

It makes more sense for this to be aiming for a realistic representation of scuba diving, because the rest of the worlds you can pick fit along with this theme. In terms of how the view is composed, it is pretty effective, especially because it uses real footage and the slight haziness is similar to how it feels to wear goggles underwater. The editing done to the footage, like the transitions and sound effects, are the components that would need to be improved.

VR Minecart is one of those games you have downloaded on your phone that you decide to play when you have nothing else to do. These games usually have a very simple premise to them, they are incredibly simple, repetitive, and addictive. The goal of the game is to collect gems and then use those gems to upgrade your luck and life so that you can play each round with hopes of collecting even more gems over a longer period of time. The rounds are quite simple too, you are in a moving mine cart and you have 4 options of movements: tilt right, left, stay center, or duck. There are blocks you have to avoid, bombs coming at you, and gems of different gems scattered across. Naturally, the longer you play the faster your mine cart goes, the more value the gems have, and the easier it is to get hit and lose the round.

Your surroundings are all in sync with the idea of being in a mine shaft that has to be abandoned quickly. You have saves and tunnels surrounding you, the railroad is old and rusty, and the mine cart you are in also seems to be running on its last wheels. The things that are flying at you make sense too, you have bombs, boulders, pretty gems, and blocks with red crosses. Keeping all the graphics in line with each other, at least in terms of theme, make it so that the story is more believable. You are not incredibly immersed but the constant theme at least makes the game more enjoyable by soothing any confusion the player would have with the situation.

To add on to the effect, you can almost feel the mine carts movement. This effect is possibly through the constant shaking of the screen, almost as if you were truly on an old rackety mine cart. As you speed up the movement becomes worse and you start to become more stressed. The emotions present themselves in the necessity to act quickly in a scene filled with confusion. The good thing about such simple repetitive games, is that each round ends up giving you more thrill because you always end up progressing further and always want to maintain your highest score. The environment complimented well with goal of the game by providing simple obstacles and benefits that both scaled with time achieved per round.

Blog for posting about the VR Experience you played.

Blog about the VR experience you played with last week. Write a few paragraphs with your interpretation of how the space works in terms of communicating information.