A Strange Sense of Familiarity
- Topic: VR, spatial design
- Duration: 2 weeks [ Apr 2019 ]
- Tools: Unity 3d, SketchUp for architecture
- Programming language: C#
- Platform: Oculus Go
The Origin of the Concept
This project is my first try in VR. So I decided to explore one of the topics that intrigued me the most: “how to induce certain feelings by environment design.”
“Familiar & Strange”, “light & heavy”, “solid & void”, “visible & invisible”, “inside & outside” — these pairs of contrast senses of space (also spatial features) had fascinated generations of architects, especially when they were indused simultaneously.
This project was an experiment to explore how to simultaneously induce the senses, “familiar & strange,” in the context of virtual reality, not only by spatial design but also by the arrangement of “events.”
The Origin of the Project
This project originated from my observation of people’s ignorance of their daily environment.
For people from the School of Communication, our lives on the campus are surrounding the “yard” of the school building — walking through the corridor, or waiting for the courses under the umbrellas — we’re supposed to be fairly familiar with it. Maybe because of the tropical weather here, most time the “yard” is like a golden pool reflecting the light too bright. So, almost no one would cast a second glance at it.
The “yard” is a perfect case of a kind of reality that we would feel familiar with and strange at the same time.
Demo in the third-person view
Demo in the Unity Editor
Demo in the first-person view
Demo in the Oculus Go
The process of design
Step1: 3d modeling the construction in SketchUp for architecture on a real scale.
Step2: flipping the construction around the “yard”, and added an environment (so, before I reached the final version, I also tried several versions with a sky in daylight).
Why made the construction (the yard) upside down?
This was the design decision I made from the very beginning. One important reason that most people around the “yard” didn’t consciously notice its existence was actually very simple: it was empty. Therefore, what I wanted to do first was to “visualize” this “empty”. Flipping the “yard” would prompt viewers to ask questions like “where am I” or “what is that” themselves, in which process I expected it would form the familiar sense of the “yard” in their mind together with a sense of strange.
Step3: flipping the camera instead of the construction. However, I found a serious problem when I flipped the construction: the floor of the “yard” made everything in the view shrouded in the darkness. By flipping the camera, I solved the lighting problem.
Step4: added “events”. The “sky” inspired me to add more objects to the scene. To a great extent, the merged feeling of “familiar & strange” also comes from these dynamic objects around.
Why "jellyfish"?
The inspiration for “jellyfish” came from one of my favorite characters, Gilliatt, in The Toilers of the Sea.
“Gilliatt did not believe that the air was an uninhabited desert. Since the sea is full, he used to say, why should the atmosphere be empty? Air-colored creatures would disappear in daylight and be invisible to us… Analogy suggests that the air must have its fish just as the sea has. ”
–VII A Ghostly Tenant For A Ghostly House, The Toilers of the Sea
the process of implementation
The code part of this project was very simple. I just used “OVRPlayerController” to help viewers to navigate the scene.
In order to let viewers walk in the air, I put an invisible collider beneath the camera. Therefore, within the area of the collider, the viewers won’t fall down by gravity.
Experience of the project
I observed the reactions of many viewers of my project. Most of them would feel relaxed, peaceful but a bit confused when they first entered the scene:
the place they were standing on was like architecture, but it has no functions; the space that has a ceiling was like space inside, but it opened to the sky beneath; the white particles were like snowflakes, but they were rising up from the sky instead of falling down; for a moment, it seemed like numerous stars rising up; and the creatures in the sky, they seemed like jellyfish, but they can fly…
Indeed, everything is very strange. Everything is sitting on the boundary. But that is exactly when viewers complete those ambiguous images in their mind and encounter the contrasting feeling of “familiar & strange”.
