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  GamePlay

MagritteVR

Our Inspiration This is a 3 week in-class group project on the topic of “Simulating Reality” at Brown University. I pitched and created my first VR project, where I modelled, textured, set up the project, programmed and learnt about integrating VR controllers with our ‘game’ mechanics.

Description Magritte questions the status of representation in his paintings. This is a VR experience that allows users to experience both possible realities of his intentions for this painting. The viewer will be able to walk around the room and enter the painting within the painting, a second ‘reality’. The user is able to switch between a landscape painting + cloud wallpaper to real mountains and real clouds.

Challenges One of the biggest challenges was creating the shader for the 3D scene inside the painting, so that only the parts contained inside the painting is shown, and the rest hidden. We found existing resource online on Stencil Buffer, adapted them and wrote our own shaders that preserves the texture of the objects but also allow them to “disappear” outside of certain boundaries. We figured our variations of the script for the easle, clouds, mountains, painting frame, which were all using slightly different combinations of code.

We initially had access only to an HTC Vive, but after setting our project up, we realised that there were many limitations. The roof in the model is low and painting appears small because the physical room is small. Limited to this space because we are using the Vive headset plugged into a PC at Fulvio’s lab. We then switched to using an OculusQuest 2.

After setting up, we realised that it is very difficult to get the users’ eye-line to line up with the exact point we would want them to for a seamless transition between the 3D clouds (real) and projected clouds (painting). We decided to use a button that allows users to click to switch between the 2 forms. Alternatively, we could teleport people back to the exact point and remove the walking component, but we think what makes this project more immersive is the ability to walk around the room.

Built With C# Unity Blender Maya

Contributers Ivery Chen - modelling, texturing, programming

Sarah Woo - modelling, texturing

Abhinav Sriram - programming

Aidan Ma - sound

Katrina Wardhana - research and essay

Built With

• blender
• c#
• oculus-integration
• unity