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1925 Borculo Storm VR Experience
The 1925 Borculo Storm VR Experience is a virtual reality museum installation aiming to recreate the events of the 1925 East Holland storm disaster as a marketing campaign to promote the planned opening of the Borculo Storm Museum in 2025, 100 years after the disaster. With a team of 7 people consisting of Houdini animators, sound designers, hardware engineers and environment artists, we set out with this project by the Saxion Extended Reality (XR) Lab.
The main premise of the project places the user on a balcony in the city center of 1925 Borculo, allowing them to witness the rain, storm, as well as the destruction of the church tower. This is then supported with Hyper Reality elements such as a physical balcony that also provides vibration, as well as fans that blows air towards the user.
As this project was a continuation from a previous team, we spent the first few weeks studying the project, organization of files, as well as Unreal Engine. However, after several weeks of dealing with optimization and compatibility issues, we then decided to import everything into another game engine, Unity.
After specifically researching the target audience and the feasibility of a VR museum installation, I then started to create an audio moodboard to define its tone of voice and the desired amount of intensity. With archival data and footage from the Borculo Fire Brigade Museum, we were able to determine what objects would be present in that time period which then allows me to create an audio atmosphere based on that data. The archives also show weather reports of that day which allows us to determine the duration of the storm and where the storm comes and goes, relative to the user's location.
Using a combination of Adobe Audition and FMOD to edit and integrate said sounds into Unity, we then added a soundscape by adding adaptive audio elements to different objects in the scene relative to the player's location. In addition to that, we programmed wind and rain sounds to sync with the arrival of the storm. However, I was then shifted towards working as an environment artist, creating new textures for the road and sidewalk.
Using Substance Designer was the biggest challenge for me in this project. Not being an artist, I was thrown into a program I have no experience on, relatively late on the project. There were little tutorials that I found useful, however, the archival data really helps in indicating what kinds of patterns we need for the streets and sidewalk. After very slowly understanding the program, I was able to create the desired cobblestone materials for the scene. This is my biggest discomfort and learning experience in the project as I barely made this in time and I still have very little confidence in working with Substance Designer.
The destruction simulation of the church and the storm formation was made in Houdini, in which we figured out a workaround to export the cloud animation as a video and projected onto the skybox. This results in much better performance, however, the video's frame rate still had to be exported under 30fps, resulting in choppy animation. The physical balcony was also made to be a few inches above ground for us to be able to fit a subwoofer playing a low frequency sound to create the vibration effect. The size of the in-game balcony is then tweaked to closely resemble the size of the physical balcony as possible.
Lastly, the trailer. Utilizing Unity's Cinemachine and Adobe Premiere Pro, the trailer showcases the scene going from a bright sunny day quickly into a storm with strong winds. I refer back to my audio moodboard above as I want to achieve the same pacing for the change in weather conditions.
By animating the in-game camera to a certain path, the first shot emulates the view of the user from the balcony in the scene, then progresses to showcase the in-game world. In correlation with the audio mood board, I also incorporated audio to convey the initial peaceful atmosphere. Then slowly introducing wind, shadows, the formation of clouds, accompanied with the church bells ringing, indicating that something is going on and causes an alertness.
Check out the trailer below! (Also available in 4K)
1925 Borculo Storm VR Experience Trailer
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