Modular Room Design for Virtual Reality Experiences (Master Project, Finished)
Author
Description
Many virtual reality experiences take place in a series of rooms, such as VR escape rooms or virtual museums. In comparison to room-based physical experiences, VR offers the possibility to adjust rooms and layouts on the fly to the needs of the user, or other criteria. To make this possible, rooms and the modules therein must be designed in a way that allows them to be adjusted to the requirements of the specific application (or to adjust their composition), while still allowing a seamless transition between rooms.
The goals of this master’s project can be grouped in three stages.
Design Framework
- The conception and definition of a theoretical design framework for a modular room architecture in virtual reality, that allows for seamless, automatic transition based on definable criteria. The concept should be refined specifically with VR escape rooms and museum experiences in mind.
- A system that uses rooms described with this framework and combines them into an escape room experience fitting certain desired properties (length, difficulty, types or diversity of puzzles).
Prototype
- The implementation of the developed system in a modular escape room that is capable of automatically selecting new rooms for progression based on factors such as time taken, the type of puzzles solved, interaction with the previous rooms and desired types of puzzles. Combination can take place at room generation time and/or dynamically, by adjusting the room composition at run-time.
- An automatic evaluation system that can fill a database with information about the difficulty (escape room), interaction time (museum) and other properties of rooms and modules. This database should also be available to improve the selection of rooms and modules on the fly.
Evaluation
- The evaluation of the implemented system through a user study measuring applicable metrics, such as how well the system is able to adhere to the defined criteria, the user enjoyment (Intrinsic Motivation Inventory, User Experience Questionnaire, ...) and the seamlessness of the modular rooms.
- Depending on the date and extent of the evaluation, an update to the design framework and the prototype implementing feedback from the evaluation.
Start / End Dates
2022/08/29 - 2022/12/31