Technical Summary on the Time TRAIN VR
IDEA
Time TRAIN is a children-friendly VR story experience with interactive elements. It was inspired by the research on VR implemented in the early stages of labour and in managing children’s pain and anxiety during unpleasant medical procedures.
NO HAND CONTROLLERS
It is a seated VR which does not require hand controllers. The player navigates through the experience with their head movement. They can look around and interact with indicated objects by looking at them for a specific time. Interactable elements were highlighted with a green glowing material for easier navigation.
TWO PARTS OF THE STORY
Time TRAIN consists of two main parts, the intro scene and the train journey.
The time the player spends in the first scene depends on how much they want to look around and when and how they will interact with the object in the virtual world. After the player looks at the big train (with the glow effect) that is animated and will appear from under the ice at about 30 seconds from the beginning of the experience, for three seconds, they will be teleported on the train where the journey which is a second Unity scene beings. This scene took players testing Time TRAIN between 1m30s – 2m30s.
On the train, the player travels with penguins and other passengers. The train starts in the tunnel and then stops at 4 stations: Icy Candy Land, Rainy City, Enchanted Forest and The Sunny City, its destination.
The train arrives after the 20s from the start of the train scene, next spends 15 seconds there and during this time the doors of the train open, and then close before the train moves again.
The time until the next station is 40 seconds, with 15s in the city, and again 40s until the train gets to the forest. It stays there for 15 seconds and after the final 40 seconds of journey, it reaches the beach where the experience ends.
This part of the application was timed for 3m12 seconds.
THE TRAIN AND THE PENGUINS
The idea of placing the experience on the train was mainly based on my son’s fascination with the trains and London underground. Multiple visits at the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden, and at Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum in Waltham Forest, where we have lived for 8 years, as well as a commute on the London tube also had a significant influence on the project idea and how it will be presented publicly during the graduates show.
Therefore, placing the player on the train where they can focus on the journey.
Penguins became an unusual addition to the story after during the time I had dedicated strictly to my family, we watched together a documentary Nextflix series on Penguins called “Penguin Town”. The production presented the ritual the penguins repeat annually – they swim from the South Pole to beaches in South Africa where they mate, lay eggs and have children, to then help their children gain independence and send them off.
This amazing habit helped me to develop the story of penguins escaping winter and travelling to the beach. Normally, they swim there but this time they want to take a train to get there.
THE STORYTELLING PENGUIN
One of the penguins welcomes the player to the Time TRAIN with a few sentences I wrote that were transformed into the voice with the text-to-speech AI tool called Polly, available on AWS. It starts speaking after the player looks at him for 3 seconds (has a glow effect underneath as a hint for the player).
The penguin is friendly and ensures that the player is not lost and asks if perhaps they want to go on a train journey with other fellow penguins. To do that, they need to find look around and find a train.
Once on the train, the same penguin narrates the story. The penguin is excited about travelling on the train, and likes everything that is around, is curious but also a bit worried when the train stops at various stations. At the same time, the penguin is positive and happy and knows that his train goes all the way to Sunny City, the beach. The penguin is like a slightly nervous child that keeps talking, sometimes even forgetting to catch a breach due to the excitement.
The penguin thanks to the script I wrote, mentions the elements inside and outside the train, and comments on passengers and also on their own feelings. All of the above to entertain the player on the train and immerse them in the virtual journey, while outside of the headset, they might be undergoing a truly unpleasant medical procedure.
ENGINE
It was build in Unity Engine 2021.3.14f for Android with assets.
COLLABORATION
Time TRAIN is an application built as my final major project in my VR BA course at LCC, UAL.
It is a collaborative project and the people involved in its production are:
Kamila Michalak – idea, research, plan, execution, Unity work, presentations, testing;
I was the leader of this project which can also be described as Director/Project Manager and Designer.
Pawel Wawrzyniak – GitHub, AWS, consultations
Max Harrison – Unity coding – gaze control, VFX clouds, fade in; consultations
Yazhe (Ria) Li – Unity coding – gaze control, scene change with gaze, loading circle (start), consultations
Ladka Abdennour – first version of the story on the train
Marcin Szlapka – penguin image
Remy Mallett – audio consultation
Leon Wawrzyniak – a poem on penguins on the train
Weronika Wawrzyniak – mocap video recording