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The Chair VR Experience
The Chair VR Experience is an introductory VR platform for people with little to no experience in Virtual Reality. VR can be an overwhelming experience for first time users, as placing players on an entirely virtual environment can have recourse to side effects such as dizziness, nausea, motion-sickness, and disorientation. The Chair aims to minimize these effects by having little interactivity and no movement requirements for the user and only focusing towards the audiovisual experience, therefore, showcasing the power of Virtual Reality utilizing only a headset and a chair.
The Chair aims to be a platform for experiences fit for first time VR users. As the launch of this product, we developed an experience called Stranded: The Beauty of the North. This experience places the user spending the night on a deserted island, waiting to be rescued. Stranded focuses on audiovisual and environmental storytelling using Unreal Engine 5 as a platform.
With a team of 6 people consisting of one engineer as our team lead, two designers, and three artists, we set out developing multiple concepts prior to settling with Stranded as a launch experience for The Chair. With this project being the whole team's first experience with Unreal Engine 5, we were excited to learn this powerful platform and have an Unreal portfolio to showcase. (see what I did there? :D)
Prior to Stranded, we had big ambitions for an audiovisual experience early in our project, coming up with concepts such as Changing Worlds. Changing Worlds was a simple in premise but very complicated to execute, in which highlights changing of environments. This concept places the user on a familiar, earthly environment, then slowly transports them onto space overlooking the night sky, planets, and the stars, with the experience ending on approaching a supernova.
While this is a strictly audiovisual experience with no interaction, it is a very intense one as it incorporates elements such as earthquakes and destruction, where our clients also deemed it being too intense for it being aimed at first time users. However, we still managed to make several iterations of prototyping before Changing Worlds was eventually scrapped for other developments.
As per usual, am the sound designer. The always neglected element in a game/experience, however, does not make it less of an essential one. And as the first step of determining a sound for a story or world building, I came up with an audio mood board for Changing Worlds.
Placing the player on a park environment, the ground then collapses around the user, leaving only a patch of land as a platform for the player and the bench they are sitting on. This platform then levitates the user into space, overlooking the night sky, a planet, a star, a passing spaceship, and as previously mentioned, approaching head-on towards a supernova as the explosion of colors covers the player's POV which also ends the experience.
Another concept we had was called Around the Campfire. Contrary to Changing Worlds, this concept was a lighthearted and comedic experience also involving changing of environments. This experience also involves characters having a dialogue with each other, telling the user a story about their hiking trip to the woods earlier that day, and the actual events happening around their environment as the story is being told.
We believe that this concept would be more fitting, as it does not have the intensity of the previous concept, making it more digestible for first time users. However, this was also then scrapped due to the projected amount of workload needed, as it requires full character animation as well as voice acting.
Also managed to work on an audio mood board for this concept as we developed an early design of the world. As this concept is dialogue heavy, it is unfortunately difficult to represent in an audio mood board. Therefore this mood board ended up as a very simple reference video for several sound effects and vibe we are going for.
After these iterations, we finally landed with Stranded: The Beauty of the North. This is mostly a major iteration of our Around the Campfire concept, and was also birthed based off assets that we already have. Still utilizing the campfire setting, we expanded our lake from Around the Campfire environment to a beach and gave it a shape of a lagoon. A proper application of sand material, set dressing such as an SOS flag and a broken canoe, and foliage such as bushes and trees to guide the user's point of view, we created an environment that suggests that it has been lived in.
As for audio mood board, I approached this specifically towards having distinctive atmospheres towards one another instead of individual sound effects, only emphasizing when needed. Starting from sunset, suggesting a windy environment with waves crashing and birds cawing, moving on to night with lighter winds and waves, crickets, owls, as well as an appearance of a bear seemingly approaching you, only to steal a fish you're grilling, which then transitions to sunrise, distinct with sounds of birds chirping instead of cawing, and a boat appearing in the distance, indicating salvation to the stranded player.
While we then iterated on having smooth transitions instead of a speed ramps as suggested in the audio mood board, all the other sounds are still relevant, therefore, with all the available sound files, I moved on towards working in Unreal Engine to create a mockup sequence of our Stranded concept. Animated a simple day and night cycle and all the scenes in between, I used our audio mood board as reference for the story's pacing and order of sounds.
This mockup then ends up becoming our main reference for the Stranded sequence. This basis is then taken to the new environment and incorporated new effects such as a night sky and aurora borealis in relation to our pacing and the duration of our experience.
I then moved on to working on the trailer, now that I am more familiar with the Sequencer. Instead of promoting Stranded, I opted to work on a trailer that promotes The Chair VR Experience as a product. As we emphasized on having The Chair in different environments, I was then convinced to have the trailer showcase that same premise.
With all our old, unused, and test environments still available to us, I then took multiple shots of chairs, benches, and seating areas in those levels as well as incorporating a dolly shot with the chairs center-framed using the Sequencer. This helps create emphasis on the chairs as well as highlighting the different environments and use cases of other experiences for The Chair VR Experience. With each shot incorporated with their own individual ambiences as well as various other sound effects, the trailer ended up very simple, but effective, with me taking a lot of pride on it! :)
If you would like to learn more, here is a Notion page about my contributions to The Chair. Also, check out the launch trailer for The Chair VR Experience below!
The Chair VR Experience Launch Trailer
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