VR Sprint: Climate Data Visualization
VR Climate Data Visualization is a VR-based data visualization tool for Oculus Quest that allows the user to experience the effects of climate change at different times and emission levels. This was my final project for Dartmouth’s AR/VR Design & Development course, created in a 2-week sprint.
Timeframe
Mar 2022
(2 weeks)
Team
1 designer, 3 developers
Role
environment design, rigging & animation
Tools
Unity & Maya
MVP Demo
Experience: The user may explore any part of the island & use a menu to choose a time period and emissions level to visualize. Higher emission levels are correlated with higher water levels, higher rain frequency, and fewer animals (seagulls and whales).
Design Process
Environment design > Rigging & Animation > Unity Integration > Post-Processing
Overview
As sole designer on a team of developers, I modeled the coastal environment using Unity’s Terrain Tools with inspiration from Icelandic and more temperate islands. Given the short timeframe (2 weeks) and the large scope of the project, I used scavenged assets to populate the environment, apart from the lighthouse, which I modeled in Maya. I also created waterfalls using particle systems and rigged & animated seagulls and whales for a more immersive experience.
Limitations
My final design included vegetation designed with Unity’s Terrain Tools for a more realistic experience. However, due to intensive use of memory for all aspects of the project, the high polygon count of the vegetation, and differences between the PC I used for design and the Mac we used for integration, I had to exclude vegetation from the final MVP to run the project without lag. The video below shows both my final design as well as the final integration. This was a valuable learning experience about the importance of accounting for performance when designing VR environments.
Gallery
Challenges & Takeaways
As a result of the short timeframe for this project (2 week) and the complex nature of the project, the final version did not include all the features we each worked on. I learned the importance of strategic planning for performance when designing complex, interactive experiences, as well as taking into account hardware differences influencing CPU and graphics. If I could redo the project, I would create a smaller island and only include details in strategically important locations.
For my work on this and other class projects for the AR/VR Design & Development course, I was awarded an academic citation for excellence.