Discover the Unseen
On Discover the Unseen, I developed key features for the application and ensured clear communication of the project's technical aspects to the client.
Discover the Unseen is an
award-winning
virtual reality (VR) project created for
MetroVancouver.
The project is designed to offer an interactive, immersive exploration of MetroVancouver's
key
facilities and infrastructure through a VR experience,
utilizing Unity and ArcGIS technologies. This was a 3 months
process that included ideation,
planning, client meetings, and documentation
(which took roughly 7 weeks) before we started the production phase during which I was
responsible
for the development of the product.
Role: VR Developer
Game Engine: Unity
Programming Language: C#
Technologies: Adobe Photoshop, Github, ArcGIS, Visual Studio
Platform: PC, Mobile
Date: 2022 - 2023
Concept
The experience starts with a user interface that guides participants into a VR environment, where they can explore a detailed map of MetroVancouver with interactive elements. These elements include pinpoints on a mini-map, allowing users to virtually transport to specific locations. Each location represents a site where a 360-degree video of MetroVancouver infrastructure was recorded. These videos appear as orbs, and when a user touches an orb, they are taken to a full 360-degree view of the video. This process can then be repeated with other locations.
Systems
This project was my first attempt working with both VR as a technology and ArcGIS. It was a fun learning journey during which I learnt a lot about both technologies. I was surprised by how easy Unity makes it to develop VR apps using the XR Interaction Toolkit. I'd like to highlight the most important systems that I worked on in this project:
ArcGIS Map
One of the client's expectations of my team was integrating ArcGIS into the app. The Esri SDK that allows Unity to render the map in VR which was one of the big tasks that slowed down my process as it set a lot of limitations to the Camera and controls in both Game and Edit mode in Unity. I eventually managed to get it to work with both by slightly modifying a script provided by the SDK and drastically changing the hierarchical structure of the project. I also managed to make a little system that allowed users to travel based on real-world coordinates that correspond to the map in the app.
Other Responsibilities
Here's a list of other tasks that I was responsible for in the project:
- Technical documentation: Documented every feature implemented as a reference for future development.
- UI programming: Programmed responsive UI for both the VR environment and screen-based elements for intuitive and functional interactions.
