Inspiration
On January 7th, 2025, the worst fires in the history of Los Angeles began in the Pacific Palisades and Eaton Canyon. Fueled by the Santa Ana winds of up to 100 mph, the fire quickly forced nearby residents to evacuate their homes.
Within one week, the blazes had scorched 40,000 acres, displaced over 150,000 people, destroyed more than 15,000 homes, and claimed 28 lives.
Many of those who fled are now without homes, joining the tens of thousands already experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles. With more than 75,000 people already unhoused, the fires have deepened Los Angeles’s long-standing housing and resource crisis, amplifying the needs and resilience of these communities.
What it does
THE RING OF FIRE is an interactive VR documentary that tells the stories of two families deeply impacted by the Eaton Canyon and Palisades Fires. Their stories highlight communities of resilience and care in the face of devastating emotional loss.
We facilitated a conversation between newly and permanently unhoused promoting awareness and compassion.
The journey begins with two voices: Adisah, who lost his childhood home in Altadena, and Patchez, a mother of two experiencing homelessness, forced to leave her newfound RV.
How we built it
The project is built in Unity and targets the Quest 3 VR headset.
Challenges we ran into
Our original plan was to build a mobile AR experience using 8th Wall, allowing users to see an interactive tabletop map of the affected neighborhoods that zooms into life-size models for several points of interest. The main goal was accessibility, as a mobile experience would help spread the story of the Eaton Canyon and Palisades Fires by allowing as many people as possible to access the AR experience simply by scanning a QR code. However, we ran into technical challenges with 8th Wall such as asset size limits and the limited power of the scripting system, which led us to pivot to building a VR project in Unity.
The switch to VR was a pleasant surprise as what the project lost in accessibility was more than made up for with a gain in immersiveness - our story could be told more thoroughly and emotively as the viewer is present in the life-size environment of the burnt home all around them.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Patchez and Adisah: We are very grateful to work with two incredible individuals who shared their stories with us and this project. This experience is truly about their voices and stories.
Technical Achievements: Implemented 2D videos in Unity with transparent backgrounds. Incorporated teleportation interactivity to enhance user engagement.
Immersive Storytelling: Designed the experience to foster empathy, making it feel as though you are speaking directly with Adisah and Patchez. Created an environment that places the viewer in Altadena, surrounded by the ruins left by the fires. Added soundscapes, including wind effects, to create a more immersive and atmospheric experience. Seamlessly pieced together two separate stories into one cohesive and emotionally resonant narrative.
Visual Elements: Captured drone shots of the landscape and obtained scans of Adisah and Patchez to add depth and authenticity to the experience.
What we learned
We learned how to recognize when to pivot from one platform to the next, moving from 8th Wall mobile AR to Aero to Unity VR over the course of 1.5 days.
We learned to triage an experience down to the heart of it, which for us was the compelling emotional testimonies of our subjects
We learned about the challenges of articulating our vision, negotiating conflict, and building trust and appreciation for a diversity of viewpoints and skillsets and working together to accomplish something that we can be proud of --
We learned how to get transparent video into Unity!
We learned how to scan 3 square miles of the city and render it in 3 days!
What's next for Ring Of Fire
Continue Building We plan to fully develop the rest of this immersive documentary. We have additional edited interview segments that delve deeper into Adisah’s and Patchez’s stories, as well as visuals and transitions, such as 360° videos of Altadena, Adisah’s house, and tiles depicting Altadena before the fires. We also intend to increase the fidelity of the photogrammetry by more fully processing. We will also implement the DepthKit footage fully.
We also want to enhance interactivity by incorporating more teleportation points and integrating other various media we’ve collected from Adisah and Patchez. Additional soundscapes, transitions, and subtitles will help create a more engaging and accessible experience. Finally, we plan to include an impactful ending sequence with a call to action and expanded resources for viewers to explore. We would like to include the specific GoFundMe and resource links we presented earlier.
We have decided as a group to continue working on this project independently in order to complete a 15 minute documentary.
Submit and Make Accessible The goal of this project is to share these stories of resilience and foster empathy. We want to make this piece widely accessible, allowing more people to hear the powerful stories of Patchez and Adisah.
Ideally, more people will see and utilize the resources as well.
Built With
- photogrammetry
- unity
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