As part of my virtual reality research, I worked on developing game mechanics and prototypes to be incorporated into human research studies. One of the first decisions in my research was which game engine I would be using. I was given an HTC Vive Pro and several Vive trackers, which made it easiest to use the SteamVR library. At the time, SteamVR was only available for Unity3D and included both documentation and tutorials to build from.

One of the goals was to act out a skit around the 360° camera and have participants watch it later in VR and survey their reactions. This would eliminate the need for actors to repeatedly act out a skit and avoids human error. I created template in Unity3D to playback 360° video that was recorded with our VIRB 360 camera. I also used the 360° camera for photogrammetry.

I built modular VR mechanics to be imported into our research scenerios. These included a full-body tracking solution, interactable objects, haptic feedback, several different menus for user input, basic locomotion, and teleportation.