Extensible: The Python Way

For the first assignment of design 201 we where to create a case study on a community that was built from the ground up. I decided to do it on the Python community.

Impossible Rooms: Making a physical space larger than it is with VR

From the 9th to the 12th of February 2021 I was at the International XR Workshop. Over those 4 days we had a number of speakers talk about various uses of XR (Extended Reality) and what research is being done in the field. We also formed groups to work on projects over those days, to be shown off at the end. My team, consisting of Dominik Lange (University of Auckland), Sam Thompson (University of Auckland), Nick Heyworth (Victoria University), and myself started with the idea of creating a maze. After viewing the various physical areas we had to show off the project in we realised that it would be difficult to fit a maze into that area. The entire reason we wanted to create a maze was to enable the testing of navigation tasks in the controlled environment of VR. Additionally we wanted to make it easier for people who don’t have experience with VR to participate in the test. This lead us to thinking about ways other than simple teleportation or directional locomotion. In an earlier post on this blog I have gone in more detail into the various forms of locomotion in VR, and we realised that using the same space (via doubling back in the real world although changing your location in the virtual world) would allow us to make a large maze in a relatively small area.

Interaction: Collective Life

For the third assignment in my Designing with Data course, we where to create an interaction. The twist this time was that we where in groups, one Creative Director, one Technical Lead. Thus I became the Technical Lead on this project, with my Creative Director being Molly McLennan.

We used Molly's original statistic, and this assignment focused on creating a design focused on how we could change this statistic.

By 2050, the equivalent of almost three planets could be required to provide the natural resources needed to sustain current lifestyles.

Taken from the Sustainable Development goals website.

Looped State: Easier said than done

The second assignment for my Designing with Data class was to create a "looped state" program by designing an animation in Processing 3 which would loop infinitely.
I had recently taken an interest in generative art, and so wanted to try something generative in this project, but ended up (mostly) not doing so as I couldn't figure a way to relate it to the data.

The data being a reason why the stat used in our previous work existed.

Each year, an estimated 1/3 of all food produced – equivalent to 1.3 billion tons worth around $1 trillion – ends up rotting in the bins of consumers and retailers, or spoiling due to poor transportation and harvesting practices

Taken from the Sustainable Development goals website.

Teleportation vs Walking: Locomotion Methods in VR

It might be no surprise that I really love working with VR. AR is cool, but there's something about creating an entirely different world which I just love. Some of my love for VR probably comes from my love of software and general mehness towards hardware. Hardware is necessary, but I often find when I work closely with it that it gets in the way a lot. I can't change that the sensors on your phone aren't super accurate so the AR elements jitter and jump around, but I can change that the sky is purple instead of blue in VR.

In my last Mixed Realities class Mark Billinghurst talked about interfaces in VR and AR. He has talk previously (if briefly) about locomotion in VR, and I'm going to focus on exploring that deeper. As I find the various modes people have used and what modes people prefer super interesting (My choice is a form of teleportation).