Inspiration
Fear is universal, it shapes decisions, fuels creativity, and even defines humanity. But what if fear could be harnessed or mitigated ? Inspired by the untapped potential of human emotions and the rise of immersive technologies. The project is inspired by dystopian stories and world like Severance, and Black Mirror. For the Mixed Reality part the project is taking inspiration from what people might fear the most, taking for example the most known phobias like arachnophobias or fear of heigh.
Analog horrors, creepypasta for example The Backrooms have been part of my inspirations because of their eerie feeling in the video or the experience. Playing on the border of reality and virtual reality.
What it does
The Chill Guy Corporation wants to envisioned a world where anxiety and fear no longer exist. It is a dystopian and fictive corporation that utilizes people's fear for their research and progress. The people watching the medias, experiencing small Mixed Reality videos are called the volunteers.
I like to call this project "The Future of Media Entertainment", it leverages Meta XR SDKs to create hyper-realistic,2 to 5-minute mixed-reality experiences. Using spatial audio with Meta Audio SDK, environmental manipulation with Meta Core SDK, interaction with the virtual world using Interaction SDK, the system adapts to the viewer’s surroundings thanks to the room system of MRUK, turning their own space into a stage for fear, wonder, or thrill. Participants aren’t just watching, they’re actors in their own psychological experiment.
How I built it
Here is a split of the different aspects of the build process I used in this project :
Tech Stack: Meta XR SDKs, Unity, custom scripts for placing video screen on actual mapped screen from MRUK.
Video and Scene Setup: I used free available assets for room setup like Mixamo for character and unity asset store for spiders. The video played in the scene is created by me, the voice of the video is made by an AI tool, eleven labs, to play on the dystopia with a force robotic voice.
Supernatural Edge and Lore: C.G.C.’s undisclosed method are ranging from subliminal messaging to controlled exposure therapy. I looked for psychological studies and pages about the experience of fear and anxiety to get close as possible with Mixed Reality to simulate and potentially increase effects of a phobia. Asking to students of my local university about the symptoms of a phobia and the explanation on some phobias.
Challenges we ran into
As I mentioned previously exploring the effects of phobia and trying to fake them was a big challenge, if maybe not the biggest I had to do in this project. I wanted to get real inputs from professional but always by staying on the entertainment side, not trying to push the experience to create trauma but to be close to what actually someone with arachnophobia would feel in presence of a lot of moving spiders climbing in their room.
Another one would be playing with the room mapping, setting things where they belong. For example a challenging part was to place the video actually on the screen in the real world, so a huge TV or a small laptop screen that would be mapped in the room setup.
Accomplishments that I am proud of
The mapping of the video on a screen was really satisfying once it was working. Exploring the different SDKs of Meta to create an experience was fun, like placing small bricks to finally build a house. Each of the SDKs were useful but together they create something grandiose, the true MR.
I'm not a writer, or at least I wouldn't called myself one, but I have enjoyed writing and imagining the story around this dystopic corporation and their phobias' rooms.
What I learned
Using the SDKs made me learn more about them (specially after their update to 81) and the Mixed reality in general. I do have also learned a lot about fear and anxiety, specially on how to treat small crisis which turned to be a nice learning in life when facing anxious situations.
What's next for Chill Guy Corporation (C.G.C)
I would really love to get support and or get more eyes on this corporation and project. My idea for the future would be do do more episodes in MR with the Chill Guy Corporation, 5 minutes experiences that would be released in a weekly basis and explore a new MR innovation every time.
I hope as well to show this fictive corporation to the world to create more projects around it, like video games for examples in VR. My main goal for the future is for people to know about the C.G.C and potentially ask themselves, who are they ?
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