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[DRIFT VR]

Hi All,

Thanks for stopping by - my friends and I are college students working on our first game! We're starting out with a VR game ("DRIFT VR") using Unity. We're fairly new to this, so would love to get any feedback as we update the post with our progress!

Drift VR Background/Story

DRIFT is a space adventure game that puts the player in the role of an astronaut that is "drifting" through space searching for the rest of his crew. Along the way, he discovers interesting artifacts and encounters various obstacles. The gameplay and story also involves an AI that guides the astronaut throughout the game and we hope to provide some comic relief from their conversations.


Why make a VR game?

In most VR games, players can't really MOVE, they instead teleport to various places in the game by looking in that direction and pushing a button. As gamers and engineers, we find teleporting to be a bit unnatural. We realize there are concerns around motion sickness and this is why "teleporting" is implemented, but we are working to create in-game visual aids to allow players to actually move and not experience motion sickness.

The goal is to help solve this motion sickness problem or at least contribute meaningful ideas for other developers, so we can all enjoy more immersive VR games!


Concept Art



First Trailer:





Thanks in advance!

[mootoo]

Nice visual ! Keep up the good work 

[AaronB]

One of the tricky things with VR movement is motion sickness.  Wearing a headset in the standing position and incorporating movement within a small area helps to overcome this.  I'm curious to see how (if) you can overcome this challenge.

[DRIFT VR]

One of the tricky things with VR movement is motion sickness.  Wearing a headset in the standing position and incorporating movement within a small area helps to overcome this.  I'm curious to see how (if) you can overcome this challenge.

Thanks, Aaron. I was one of our biggest challenges.
We did a full-scale research regarding this topic including understanding vestibular system (the root of motion sickness), talking to Ubi Soft's Eagle Flight team and also testing prototype and hypothesis
And as you can see from the trailer, we implemented several different mechanisms to defy the motion sickness to our users.
1. The white particle to notify the direction of where the user is heading
2. Dynamic peripheral covering for the user to avoid too much information on peripheral view that will cause motion sickness
3.  Helmet lighting to notify particular action and view priorities

We tested about 30+ people so far with or without previous VR experience. All reported great feedback regarding motion sickness.

You can see some of the features in our trailer.
And we would love to hear your feedbacks.

[DRIFT VR]

Hi, Mootoo. How are you?
Have you check our trailer yet?
We would love to hear your feedback.

Thank you!

[AaronB]

We did a full-scale research regarding this topic including understanding vestibular system (the root of motion sickness), talking to Ubi Soft's Eagle Flight team and also testing prototype and hypothesis
And as you can see from the trailer, we implemented several different mechanisms to defy the motion sickness to our users.
1. The white particle to notify the direction of where the user is heading
2. Dynamic peripheral covering for the user to avoid too much information on peripheral view that will cause motion sickness
3.  Helmet lighting to notify particular action and view priorities

We tested about 30+ people so far with or without previous VR experience. All reported great feedback regarding motion sickness.

You can see some of the features in our trailer.

Very interesting - particularly the dynamic peripheral covering.  I could see this becoming a standard VR setting to cater to those who do and do not suffer motion sickness (DPC: 0 - 100%).

And we would love to hear your feedbacks.

The trailer certainly portrays the visual impact of the game, but does not impart any game play elements.  I'm left with the feeling that all I do is fly around a low poly universe.  A bit more detail on the story and challenges would make the trailer more engaging.

[freank]

will it be also for cardboard?

[DRIFT VR]

will it be also for cardboard?

We are trying to make it work on Daydream, Samsung GearVR and cardboard.
However, the cardboard gets a little bit tricky since it doesn't have a controller and we
We will do our best to make it work since we know cardboard has the most audience.

[DRIFT VR]

We did a full-scale research regarding this topic including understanding vestibular system (the root of motion sickness), talking to Ubi Soft's Eagle Flight team and also testing prototype and hypothesis
And as you can see from the trailer, we implemented several different mechanisms to defy the motion sickness to our users.
1. The white particle to notify the direction of where the user is heading
2. Dynamic peripheral covering for the user to avoid too much information on peripheral view that will cause motion sickness
3.  Helmet lighting to notify particular action and view priorities

We tested about 30+ people so far with or without previous VR experience. All reported great feedback regarding motion sickness.

You can see some of the features in our trailer.

Very interesting - particularly the dynamic peripheral covering.  I could see this becoming a standard VR setting to cater to those who do and do not suffer motion sickness (DPC: 0 - 100%).

And we would love to hear your feedbacks.

The trailer certainly portrays the visual impact of the game, but does not impart any game play elements.  I'm left with the feeling that all I do is fly around a low poly universe.  A bit more detail on the story and challenges would make the trailer more engaging.

Yes. We are still editing the script for our story. When we cut the first trailer, we only had the mechanism done.
We are adding audio cue (an AI for the space suit) as well since we did find people become extremely sensitive to audio within the VR setting.
Thanks again for all the great feedback. Please keep in touch.

[HorizonZeroDawn]

I'm not sure that Jocasta is a very appealing name, it's too robust and somewhat difficult to remember.
Also, I'm usually against references from other movies, games etc. because I like to come up with original content, but that's just me.
Will you also give the astronaut a name?

[DRIFT VR]

I'm not sure that Jocasta is a very appealing name, it's too robust and somewhat difficult to remember.
Also, I'm usually against references from other movies, games etc. because I like to come up with original content, but that's just me.
Will you also give the astronaut a name?

We are thinking about naming the astronaut Luke for the reference we all know. But we are also concerned by the fact we should not give the astronaut a name at all. For the name of Jocasta, we are still working on it. Do you have any suggestions regarding the name? Some original ones?

[DRIFT VR]

Script Update



We started collaborating with a professional script writer. He wasn't able until since week since he was at E3.
We are super excited to write a comprehensive story for the astronaut and the AI.

[HorizonZeroDawn]

I'm not sure that Jocasta is a very appealing name, it's too robust and somewhat difficult to remember.
Also, I'm usually against references from other movies, games etc. because I like to come up with original content, but that's just me.
Will you also give the astronaut a name?

We are thinking about naming the astronaut Luke for the reference we all know. But we are also concerned by the fact we should not give the astronaut a name at all. For the name of Jocasta, we are still working on it. Do you have any suggestions regarding the name? Some original ones?

I think Luke works. And I like the script sample. It's pretty funny.
Is there any voice over?

[DRIFT VR]

HTC VIVE Controller Update:

[DRIFT VR]

I'm not sure that Jocasta is a very appealing name, it's too robust and somewhat difficult to remember.
Also, I'm usually against references from other movies, games etc. because I like to come up with original content, but that's just me.
Will you also give the astronaut a name?

We are thinking about naming the astronaut Luke for the reference we all know. But we are also concerned by the fact we should not give the astronaut a name at all. For the name of Jocasta, we are still working on it. Do you have any suggestions regarding the name? Some original ones?

I think Luke works. And I like the script sample. It's pretty funny.
Is there any voice over?

There will be voice over the astronaut and the AI.
We are trying very hard to recruit professional voice actor and actress to bring awesome experience.
Within our budget, that's for sure.
 

[AaronB]

I'm getting a small grey no entry sign for where I assume the script should be in the first post?

[DRIFT VR]

I'm getting a small grey no entry sign for where I assume the script should be in the first post?

I fixed the script screen shot link.
Here are some samples of our final draft.
Let me know your thoughts.

[DRIFT VR]

New HUD Design:


We had great progress with the HUD design yesterday.
And here are the animation and effect. Let us know your thoughts!

We are inspired by what we find in our research that aligns with what Youtube found in their heat-map research that users in VR focus in the center of the frame.
Here is the link if you guys are also interested in how users behave in Youtube like our whole team.
https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2017/06/hot-and-cold-heatmaps-in-vr.html

Here are the new designs.
There are all working progress. Please let us know what you guys think.

[DRIFT VR]

Noob Mistakes in Creating Animations in Unity

Today we learned the hard way that when creating animations in Unity, the order in which things are done is very important. Decided to create a new animation clip without first creating an "animator" and then later discovered there was no way to connect the already made motion clip to the animator! THIS IS MADNESS. Of course - remaking the animation wouldn't have been that bad, but at that point we already spent 2 hours trying to figure out a way to make it work. Lesson learned - google first before wasting time with Unity...

But gotta say - we think the animation is pretty cool. Check it out below:





The changes to the bouncing ball represent various states - in the video it goes from a normal state to talking then to an alert state (when it turns red).

[DRIFT VR]

Store Game Art

We had some thoughts about our steam store game art.
We try to combine the space theme with our low-poly art style.

Tell us what you guys think. Which one do you prefer, the top one which is the original one or the new one at the bottom?