One Billion Lost: Australia's Wildfires VR Experience

Rigging of origami style Rabbit Eared Bandicoots
Modelling of origami style Rabbit Eared Bandicoots
Modelling of origami style kangaroo
Rigging of origami style kangaroo model
Code snippet
Overview of the scene in Unity
Interactive start menu
Overview of the scene in Unity
Ingame view of origami style animal models roaming the scene
The scene ends with a low poly style earth and a poignant audio experience
If contacted by fire, the origami style animals burn up as if they are paper
If contacted by fire, the origami style animals burn up as if they are paper
Ingame view of the fires consuming the animal models

Inspiration

The rapidly advancing wildfires are an unstoppable force of nature, and you along with hundreds of helpless animals are trapped between that fire and a body of water. Where do you go?

What it does

We inject urgency into the scene with the mercilessly advancing wildfire. All around you the vibrant wildlife of Australia are disappearing by the second. Your natural inclination is to run to the water: this was the true reality for able bodied Australian animals and humans, many of whom had to escape to bodies of water to tread water for hours while waiting for wildfires to pass. Many were not so lucky.

How we built it

We sketched/modeled in Clip Studio and Blender before importing into Unity. Unity was the workhorse responsible for bringing together all assets into the VR environment. We scripted in C#. We prototyped with the Oculus Rift S acting as our HMD.

Challenges we ran into

We struggled with the tone and treatment of the subject matter, walking a careful balance between shock value, intimating a sense of helplessness and ending with a call to action to look after the animals of Australia and their environment.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

In order to make the VR experience suitable for all ages we made a conscious decision to abstract the animals in origami style. On contact with the fire, the origami animal models burn up and float skyward in plumes of ashes contributing to a growing sense of loss and helplessness.

What we learned

We learned a lot building a rapid prototyping and troubleshooting workflow with Unity and the Oculus especially around shaders, performance cost/optimization and spatial sound design.

What's next for One Billion Lost: Australia's Wildfires

With more time we'd like to apply more polish to animations, rigging and believable fire dynamics. We'd also like to better build out interactivity with the animals and perhaps inject small bits of gamification (ie carrying animals to safety in the water) to engage the user further.