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The Haunted Castle Dark Ride
Inspiration It all started when I got my DK1 in 2013 and I thought VR was the perfect medium for dark rides which have been one of my life long passions since I was 5 years old riding Adventures Thru Inner Space in Disneyland. Roll the clock forward to the Covid lockdowns and my IT Management Consulting Business suddenly came to a grinding halt giving me lots of free time, so I decided to finally try my hand at VR development. I created a small pilot of “Into the Metaverse”, my first VR dark ride inspired by some of the greatest Dark Rides at Walt Disney World’s EPCOT. That ride ended up being a hit as can be seen in the many reviews of the app on the Meta Quest store and it encouraged me to expand the app from 1 dark ride, to an open world Theme Park which I added to the store in mid 2024. Since that time I have been passionately working on the second highly detailed dark ride, The Haunted Castle, which is presently 75% complete and adds hand tracking and interaction to the Theme Park and it is this ride I am submitting to the competition.
What it does The Haunted Castle is a large scale, highly detailed VR dark ride featuring a complex ride system, animatronic style characters, synchronized audio, effects, real human narration and even a real band performing all the music in the ride including the Graveyard hit. Guests travel through the castle and its underground mines, encountering the Coal Baron and the supernatural forces tied to his fortune. The experience can be enjoyed solo or with friends through synchronized online ride vehicles, allowing riders anywhere in the world to experience the attraction together. Having hand presence and interaction makes being on the ride even more immersive, especially when with another. It is a magical experience and all my Alpha testers agreed that it is even better than the first top rated dark ride. It makes the app very accessible to non gamers.
How I built it The Theme Park was Imagineered using Unity, Vulkan, OpenXR, XR Origin, XR Interactions, XR Hands, Meta All in One SDK, Meta Avatars SDK and Normcore for the online multiguest platform. Extensive use of splines to drive smooth vehicle motion, precise timing, and event synchronization. Characters are animated through a mix of hand keyed work by a former Disney animator (the devil in the Lava Chamber is their first animation in progress) and full body motion capture I co-created with another developer and made available on the Unity Asset Store (https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/animation/openxr-vr-motion-capture-animation-tool-r1tools-214497)
Challenges I ran into Achieving an open world Theme Park on mobile VR hardware required constant and deep optimizations plus a lot of creativity to make the magic seamless and never break immersion even when with others on rides. Large, complex environments with no repeating assets, many animated skinned mesh characters on screen at once, many real time lights (over 500 in the park with 8 at any one time), and zero load screens pushed the Quest 2 and even 3 to its absolute limits. The amount of engineering in this app has been extensive and a huge surprise as I thought a theme park would be easier than a game, but it turned out that in order to ensure immersion, it really pushed the boundaries of what is possible.
Accomplishments that I am proud of The scale of the ride, the zero load screens keeping immersion intact, the emotional pacing, and the ability for distant friends and families to ride together are accomplishments I am especially proud of. It is all very magical as many have told me, especially for those in families introducing non gamers to VR. I get emotional praise from new users on a regular basis with lots of encouragement to keep on going as VR needs these sorts of experiences.
What I learned I learned how to design highly optimized, large-scale scenes for mobile VR with zero load screens plus all the internal tools that accelerate development that allowed me to Imagineer really engaging dark rides. I also learned that bringing your hands into the Theme Park, especially in multi guest mode, is truly magical in a way I was not anticipating. You really have to experience it to understand why people reach out to me thanking me for one of the best VR experiences they have ever had.
What's next for The Haunted Castle Dark Ride Complete the remaining 25% of The Haunted Castle, make the multiguest a little more rebust when a player drops and then publish to the store so I can finally after 5 years of development, start to market my Theme Park. Then I plan on working on the next ride, Jungle Jam, and if the finances can justify, I would like to hire more people to help me Imagineer multiple rides in parallel as the biggest feedback I get from people are emotionally messages begging me for more rides and faster, but for that I will need a team as while AI is very helpful, Imagineering requires the human touch as it is about generating magical experiences and that takes an emotional approach to development
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