1. VR Concept
I was inspired by Osmose, a VR project with 3d computer simulated graphics focuses on the artistic exploration in a virtual environment in 1995. People navigate in the virtual world through the use of their breath and the diving pose, which allows humankind to explore the environment in such an intuitive way when they were in their mother’s womb. Thus, they are able to concentrate on the meditation process and the spiritual journey in Osmose. The computer graphics in this project is also innovative compared to the rigid, bold lines and shapes in the VR project (Computer chronicles, 1992) at that time: it consists of multiple scenes with abstract patterns and mystic textures. All of these come together and make up this amazing VR project which demonstrates the possibilities and the meaning of virtual reality itself as a digital medium.
People navigate in the virtual world through the use of their breath and the diving pose, which allows humankind to explore the environment in such an intuitive way when they were in their mother’s womb.
2. VR Production
Based on what I learned during the lecture and my exploration in these two game engine, I create the form below to show the difference between unity and unreal engine.
This is my first time trying Unreal engine and the user interface seems a little bit overwhelming than Unity, but I think it should be fine after I finish more Unreal tutorials and match up the concept I learned from Unity. As a person who might work as a developer in the group for the following project, what caught my interest is the Blueprint feature in Unreal. I have never learned C# in a systematical way, but do have some experience in Javascript, I am able to understand the existing C# script in Unity, and also adapt other people’s code to my project. My experience in unity development is always about searching all the related tutorials and assemble all the existing script pieces together to achieve my desired goal. This is not always a pleasant experience because sometimes these script pieces just won’t work out together, and I have to spend more time on debugging. I also found Unity changes the script and syntax frequently, but it is always minor modification and most of the online tutorials won’t update for it. As a result, I also have to spend time searching the most up-to-date syntax in Unity C#.
Blueprint in Unreal makes me feel that I could survive from these problems and C++. The node-based visual programming method reminds me of the Hypershade window in Maya. It seems to help me save time on programming syntax as long as I understand the programming logic and could build the correct connection between nodes. However, I noticed that there are a lot of similar functions and variable names, so it is not that easy to select the correct one if you are not familiar with the Unreal documentation.
During the lecture I also noticed that to build a more complex program or game mechanics, people might have to create a messily nested flowchart group like this, so I think Blueprint is not a good idea for complex scripts and programming logic, as the intuitive flowchart will only be distracting. In this case, Unity would be a better option considering the efficiency.
I create the visualization below to show my idea of the good option for people with different level of programming skill: For people who are proficient in a specific language, just go for it. For beginners, blueprint is a good start point because it is more intuitive and easy to learn. But dealing with complex project and programming logic, Unity C# would be a better option thanks to its gradual learning curve.
