Download Link: PS_Newsletter_Week 3

Our week In Recall

This was a week of progress and planning, if I had to name it, I would call it the ‘First week of the rest of our project’.
We had several meetings throughout the week, especially during the first three days. These were mainly organizational meetings where we discussed the progress we had made in regards to our first set of tests and looked forward to figure out what would be next for our team. On Wednesday we sat down for about 2 hours to go back over some of our decisions and finalize everything that had been talking about. We now have a clear view of our next few weeks until the week after quarters.
Thursday and Friday were working days. Tushar is completing the last of our Gesture Tests and Austin started on a new set of tests focusing on Art assets.

What we Accomplished

The biggest thing we accomplished was to plan out our next several weeks. We will be working on tests until the week following quarters. After that we are going to switch over to prototypes. This decision ended up being a catalyst to us focusing our testing efforts. We went through our lists of test and began to distinguish which test were important to us.
Beyond general planning we have our first date set aside for testing. Since we are putting the final touches on our Gesture Test today and tomorrow we are going to invite testers in on Sunday. Currently we have 2 out of 4 tests complete with the other two at about 50%.

 

Our ‘Tracking Resolution Test’, the user turns their head to line the light colored cube up with the hole and pass through.

 

Simultaneous to Tushar’s work,  Austin is starting work on a series of Art Tests designed to see how the Oculus’s fisheye effect might distort art work.

 

 

What’s Next

While Austin and I focus on the Art Tests, Tushar and Frank will be working on getting several forms of input working in Unity (X-box controllers, Razer Hydras, etc.). Once these two tasks are done we will meet together again to tackle a group of Control Tests and perform our Motion Tests.

PDF Download of the Week2 Newsletter – PS_Newsletter_Week 2

Our Week In Recall

This week we started out by showing our posters and branding material to Ruth. We had finished a few rough ideas during week one and wanted to make sure we were headed in the right direction. Well, we weren’t.

This left us with some work to do once Tushar made it back from PAX. So on Wednesday we had our second major team meeting. The idea was that we needed to brainstorm the feedback Ruth gave us and come up with Poster ideas that better represented our project. Also, we needed to get organized and get started on our 20 deliverables for our project.

After we created a plan for our first two prototypes we split off and got to work. Tushar and Frank began work on the prototypes, while Austin and I got to work on completing the projects branding (website, logo, half sheet, etc).

As we near the end of the week we are still in work mode. Progress continues on the first two prototypes as Austin and I finish our work we will start contributing art assets needed by Frank and Tushar.

What we Accomplished

The biggest thing we accomplished was getting organized. We have a roadmap to our first official two tests of the Oculus Rift, one being a motion test and the other being a series of gesture tests. The work is going well on both, but we are noticing some issues that come with the Oculus.One of these is that enclosed spaces are dangerous. The motion tests require us to create a hallway very similiar to the 2nd Floor of the ETC. Our first though was to construct some quick walls in Unity that mimic the 2nd floor’s walls. It turns out that such measurements, though not claustrophobic in real life are very claustrophobic in oculus vision. And so we are remodelling our first test map.

Other than that, our first section of the gesture test is nearing completion, the newsletter template is done, and the poster is finished.

It takes a lot to get a project moving. Each of us has many other responsibilities to worry about, and while it may seem like we are falling behind with 2 weeks down and no deliverables finished out of the 20 promised; it’s important to remember that building momentum is a project in it of itself. Even a 4 person project is a large beast to move, but in week 2, we’ve managed to lumber our first step forward.

What’s Next

Once we have completed our first two tests for the Oculus we will do an in-house playtest (making sure the tests actually test for what we are looking for. Then we will refine and put them away for friday. In the interim we’ll move on to our next deliverables.  Come friday we’ll perform our first testing day.

 

Hi Everyone,

We are Project Spearhead and we are a student pitch project that focuses on exploring and testing the limits of the new virtual reality head-mounted display, the Oculus Rift.

Our goal is to develop 20 test and prototypes that utilize the Occulus Rift in new and experiential ways.
During our research we found that many project utilizing the Occulus Rift focused solely on on utilizing the rift as a camera but we feel that this new piece of technology has far greater potential.

 

What we Accomplished

This week we started out by meeting as a team, researching fellow Occulus Rift Projects and discussing everything we wished to accomplish with the Occulus Rift. From our brainstorming session we were able to develop a thorough list of mechanics and potential limitations we wanted to test.

As the week came to a close we were able to develop three ideas for our branding material (website, logo, half sheet, etc.) We also finalized our vision and definition of what test and prototypes consist of.

Our TEST GOALS are to:
Learn about the abilities of the Oculus Rift while testing a hypothesis regarding it’s usability in a game design context.

Our PROTOTYPE GOALS are to:
Create a fun experience using the Oculus Rift and utilize knowledge gained from tests to inform our mechanic; this will either cement our findings from the tests or open our eyes to real life exceptions to the data we gathered.

What’s Next

Our next step is to brainstorm our first two test and develop the design of our posters and branding material.

PS_Newsletter_Week 1