Escape from Osiris

Tutorial teaching players how to use hand based controls
Using "fire laser" gesture to fight an Osiris bot
Returning fire to a turret using the "fire missile" gesture.
Fighting off two turrets at the same time!
Osiris Valley screenshot
Osiris Valley from another angle

Inspiration

I've always dreamed of bringing the intense space battles of Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter to VR. But I wanted to make it accessible to everyone, so even if you're new to VR, you can jump in and start shooting in no time.

What it does

Escape from Osiris is a fully playable demo-level to showcase controller-less, hand based interactions in Meta Quest devices. Player's right hand is used to control the ships omni-directional travel and orientation, while the left hand is used for gesture based interactions, such as shooting missiles or enabling the ship's shields. There is a narrative based quest to clear turrets along the player's way, while managing the ships resources carefully.

How we built it

The game is built using Unity 2022.3 with Meta Interaction SDK v66. I used Synty Studios 3d models / VFX and Bakery Lightmapper for the composition of the scene. Eleven Labs was used for the voiceovers, while Krotos Studios Pro was used to create the sound effects. I utilized Meta Interaction SDK's hand tracking for the gesture/pose based interactions and I coded the custom omnidirectional controller for the ship, as well as the integration of the UI with the game mechanics and the resource system.

Challenges we ran into

The greatest challenge has been false positives in hand gestures / poses, which forced me to scale down on some abilities such as an EMP shockwave. For the custom right hand controller, also getting the right amount of movement / rotation took many sessions of trial and error. Finally, the tutorial took longer than the actual project itself, due to the "step-by-step" nature and ensuring that the players were able to follow the intended cadence of the steps.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am very proud of the tutorial, which has both voice over and visual elements to help people understand how to use the ship's various controls. I am also happy with the way that the spaceship moves and engages in combat, without using physical VR controllers.

What we learned

I think there is definitely space for hands-only controls in the future of VR gaming and designers will need to experiment with more novel interactions with a view to eventually completely ditching the physical controllers.

This project definitely taught me how to better plan and use my time. For example, I did light baking which takes a significant amount of time early on to avoid last minute panic. For my future projects, I will definitely reserve more time for onboarding and tutorials.

What's next for Escape from Osiris

I would like to work further on hands-only interactions and make both controllers (right hand - movement, left hand - poses/gestures) much more intuitive, accurate and false-positive-free. If people enjoy the experience as much as I did, I plan to optimize the performance & file size, expand on the demo and turn it into a commercial title with multiple levels and added features such as power-ups.