Executive Summary
Razor
Immerse yourself in the sound-driven experience of being alone on a rainy day, combining the percussive capabilities of pots and pans with the impact of droplets falling from the sky– all without getting wet.
Vision Statement & Top Level Summary
By method of tactile, satisfying interactions with household objects re-contextualized to catch raindrops, Amaoto guides immersants through a meditative, self-paced exploration of a rainy environment. In doing so, it not only hopes to provide a calming escape, but encourages immersants to find simple joys or a sense of peace within day-to-day interactions which they may not have paid close attention to previously.
Differentiators
Our project aims to provide a meditative space for immersants, allow and design for comfortable freedom of exploration (including minimal exploration), and pursue immersion as a meditative tool.
Visual Style
While straying from oversimplified cel-shading due to its harsher visual identity and widespread use over smaller-scale virtual experiences, we would like to explore a toon shading approach with careful and intentional use of bloom, gradients, and detail. This direction is intended to keep the appearance of our project calm, and less visually busy.
Core Designed User Experience
In terms of how our experience would "transform" immersants, we hope to encourage the seeking of simple joys or an inherent beauty in simple interactions which may otherwise be overlooked.
To take advantage of the medium of VR, we intend to push tactile, smaller-scale, hand-held interactions with objects, along with responsive, visceral feedback such as controller rumble or audio cues. Additionally, the isolated, serene environment we intend to create should be complemented by VR's interruption of stimuli from the physical world.
In relation to the course's design challenge, we intend to pursue and make use of immersion, particularly sensory immersion, as a tool for meditation and self-reflection.
Introduction
Immersants find themselves in a familiar, rainy environment. Hints (in the form of object placement, etc.) are provided as to how the immersant may interact with objects, placing them under areas where raindrops fall to create rhythmic visual and auditory responses. With no clear goal, restriction, or standard, immersants are encouraged to experiment at their own pace, with the freedom at any point to simply stop and enjoy the atmospheric nature. Moving from one place to another would reveal differing amounts or positions of raindrops, resulting in louder or quieter areas, or some conducive to different object placements.
Narrative
For the purpose of encouraging a self-paced, ludic exploration of our VR experience, we have intentionally avoided the inclusion of story elements. By doing so, we hope to allow each immersant to create their own experience, and develop a personal connection through a self-guided journey.
Despite this lack of Narrative, Amaoto aims to encourage exploration through a dilapidated greenhouse setting, one we came to while attempting to ideate meditative settings that would encourage exploration and inquiry.
Storyboard
VR mechanics & Physical Rig
List and briefly explain your final (or most recent) project mechanics (core and secondary) here. Explain how specifically users interact with your VR experience and how that relates to what you would like them to experience, feel, and come away with. Be clear if there is a GUI or heads-up display etc. and how it contributes.
Core Mechanics
Amaoto relies heavily on the immersant’s ability to interact with handheld objects in the physical world, as well as being able to differentiate subtle differences in sound. Through a system of exploration and discovery, the immersant is able to locate varying speeds and weights of rain, as well as a plethora of objects to be used as makeshift ‘instruments’ when combined into each rain flow. This system of combining each instrument with different rain flows to make a unique tone or percussive pattern forms our core mechanic for the experience.
As mentioned in the previous section, discovery and exploration play a key role in guiding the player towards unlocking new options for sound making. This system of navigation through the joystick controls of the HMD fulfills this role as the secondary mechanic, with the same hand trackers allowing the immersant to pick up and move these objects around as the immersant finds necessary
Secondary mechanics
Envisioned physical setup
Our physical rig relies on soothing three of our immersant’s senses before, during, and after our experience. Through the use of dark cloth or tarp over top of the physical rig, we aim to reduce the quantity of light impacting the immersant prior to their entry into the experience, reducing harsh glares and easing them into the shallow lighting within our VR experience. Next, continuing to play off of the theme of sound within our experience, we intend to place sound dampening materials alongside the interior of our rig to reduce any outside noise to our immersant, while playing a muffled sound of rain through a set of speakers with the intent of emulating being in-doors during a rainy day. Finally, the sense of touch is eased with the inclusion of low-down, comfortable seating in which the immersant is able to sit naturally and enjoy a wide range of positions by laying further back than they normally might in a typical office or classroom chair. Our rig is ideally a dim, quiet space that allows for comfort.
Locomotion technique
Locomotion within our experience is accomplished through the use of joystick controls in the hands of the user, facilitated by the hand controllers provided alongside each HMD. Within the VR experience, the immersant moves in a typical walking pattern.
Inspiration Analysis
This idea was strongly inspired by episode five of Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou (Girl's Last Tour), in which the duo of protagonists notice the sound of water dripping on a metal helmet, and begin to place various objects throughout their shelter, creating a symphony of intermingling sounds.
Immersion Frameworks
The type of immersion we will be most focused on will be that of sensory immersion, as our approach to generating a calming, meditative atmosphere will be heavily focused on sound, visuals, and the connotative connections immersants draw to our application of both. More specifically, this includes a "believable" environment, both audibly and visually which immersants can buy into and suspend their disbelief inside. It also includes simple, satisfying, tactile interactions, and a world responsive to these interactions to establish a direct back-and-forth communication. It is worth noting that we also regard the idea of flow to be particularly applicable in the case of this project, and intend to provide simple, rewarding tasks with enough variance to encourage a flow-like state.
Why Our Project is Innovative
Our project relies on the participants’ ability to see patterns and take cues from the environment in order to interact with it. Ours is a very unique approach because we are leaning away from having any prompts for the user, so it will be all self-guided as they go through our project. The user will be able to interact with the environment as much or as little as they want, creating a unique experience for everyone who chooses to participate.
Stress and anxiety have been increasing since Covid-19, calming experiences like ours are needed more than ever. The main goal of our project is to ease the stress and anxiety of the participant. We want to connect the user with themselves and have them experience a moment of introspection once they are finished.
The most interesting feature of our project is the mixing of sound. The user can interact with the environment to create different musical rhythms by placing objects under raindrops. Our project concept is super unique and this is what the main selling point would be. Additionally, our project is meant to be relaxing and meditative, and we would want our users to understand that.