Life can be like a video game and that is really cool. But not when that game is like Dark Souls. So I am worried about having about 2 months of Unity work down the drain if the computer does not work. There was a recent crash on Friday...that turned into something bigger today. Im getting it checked out tomorrow. Im not down and out though cause no matter what I want to have something to submit in September. It may not be what I originally had planned but I will have something. On one side perhaps the computer is not screwed. The week did start off well at first and hope fully it still goes well. I secured some original music to add to the game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ongKTviB7JQ&t=3sI am also shooting a 360 video for the artist next week..so depending on the computer situation and if I can access the project again I may need to rest heavily on a 360 video for a submission. Never giving up...but working on solving.
Clorama Dorvilias
Anti-Bias Classroom Training with Jessica Outlaw
Week 7
Personal Stuff
So another crazy week of travel--started in Cuba for sister's 30th birthday, NYC to speak at the VR Games for Change Summit, Massachusetts to visit my new niece and back to NYC today awaiting my flight back to SF tonight.
Update: Game Development
Since I wasn't able to bring my PC for further developing the prototype that Jessica and I are working on for Classroom Anti-Bias Training, I did have time to better think about the technical scope for what to build for submission. This entails the specific user flow that we would focus on technically building out and perfecting which would capture the most critical aspects of the training and experience--potentially ready for immediate use as a beta demo.
Jessica delivered an amazing detailed and comprehensive overview for a business, budget, and concept proposal that would be we could build on for prospective stakeholder pitches. I feel that this will meet the technical prototype demo halfway.
Demo User Flow (rough outline)
So naturally, HAD to bring the Gear 360 cam with me to Cuba! I took about 20gb of video that I can't wait to put together when I get back home.
Took a whole bunch of fun Tiny Planet photos. And of COURSE, FB'd live at the historic National Hotel of Cuba & the Hotel El Presidente of Cuba (only places I could find with wifi).
Funny enough, the wifi was so bad, that it only livecasted about a minute of both experiences. While the National Hotel livecast was posted to my personal page, the live cast from the El Presidente in Havana can be viewed here: https://www.facebook.com/ClolovesVR/videos/159578304614945/
And of course, HAD to FB live my first experience of speaking at the VR for Change Summit in NYC on August 2nd, using the Gear 360:
VR for Change Summit Panel Discussion: Forging the Cyberfeminist Future
I was also lucky enough to get to hang out and bond with other inspiring Launch Padders that just made the whole experience 10x better for me! Shout out to Meredith, Hessvacio, and Kiira!
Anti-Bias Classroom Training with Jessica Outlaw
Week 7
Personal Stuff
So another crazy week of travel--started in Cuba for sister's 30th birthday, NYC to speak at the VR Games for Change Summit, Massachusetts to visit my new niece and back to NYC today awaiting my flight back to SF tonight.
Update: Game Development
Since I wasn't able to bring my PC for further developing the prototype that Jessica and I are working on for Classroom Anti-Bias Training, I did have time to better think about the technical scope for what to build for submission. This entails the specific user flow that we would focus on technically building out and perfecting which would capture the most critical aspects of the training and experience--potentially ready for immediate use as a beta demo.
Jessica delivered an amazing detailed and comprehensive overview for a business, budget, and concept proposal that would be we could build on for prospective stakeholder pitches. I feel that this will meet the technical prototype demo halfway.
Demo User Flow (rough outline)
- User will be presented with Research Lobby upon the start of the demo.
- Two researchers enter room and greet the user
- Researchers provide intro to the tool and training for use of the controls and the navigation.
- Walls open up behind the researchers to reveal a 'state of the art' futuristic, research facility. (See our Pinterest board for inspired design ideas)
- User is presented with options for testing to choose from.
- After selecting the desired test, room will slowly move the testing environment to the user (to minimize teachers having to use controls to navigate which can present technical issues for non-tech save users)
- One researcher will provide intro and tutorial to the test.
- User will then select to begin the test
- After test is over, research will share results and recommended solutions for improvement
- User is presented with option to retake test and practice new solutions, take another test, and or practice room for training, once satisfied with results.
- How do we keep the 'bias testing' ostensible so as to not evoke fear or stressed testing for users. For example, some solutions could be for test session naming called: "Learn your classroom teaching style" or "Inclusion Testing" --or something not so obviously potentially biasing for the user. Results will highlight the different ways teachers chose students (always to the right, students raising hand higher, students with color, etc) and showing the numbers or the percentages for the choices made on visible factors.
- What research proven strategies for recommendations should we provide users with based on specific testing results?
- Can this app begin to open up to 'different departments' that tackle biases in other environments outside of the classroom?
So naturally, HAD to bring the Gear 360 cam with me to Cuba! I took about 20gb of video that I can't wait to put together when I get back home.
Took a whole bunch of fun Tiny Planet photos. And of COURSE, FB'd live at the historic National Hotel of Cuba & the Hotel El Presidente of Cuba (only places I could find with wifi).
Funny enough, the wifi was so bad, that it only livecasted about a minute of both experiences. While the National Hotel livecast was posted to my personal page, the live cast from the El Presidente in Havana can be viewed here: https://www.facebook.com/ClolovesVR/videos/159578304614945/
And of course, HAD to FB live my first experience of speaking at the VR for Change Summit in NYC on August 2nd, using the Gear 360:
VR for Change Summit Panel Discussion: Forging the Cyberfeminist Future
I was also lucky enough to get to hang out and bond with other inspiring Launch Padders that just made the whole experience 10x better for me! Shout out to Meredith, Hessvacio, and Kiira!
Micah Week 7 | 7/30 - 8/5
Personal Observations/Progress
- Attended Siggraph this week and overall really enjoyed it. The last Siggraph I attended was in 1998 I believe. Lots of VR focus this year, as to be expected and given that the crowd wasn't too large, I was able to experience a wide variety of projects and seminars. I'll try to put my notes into some sort of cohesive form and will share them within the OLP Facebook group. Unity had its own theater where they ran different workshops each day. There were even a few familiar faces like Sarah Stumbo who ran a workshop on XR Development in Unity. (BTW XR is just the acronym assigned to AR/VR/MR/ etc. I didn't know this until later 😉
Some of the cool things I saw and got to experience at Siggraph 2017 include: Controlling an object with my mind while in a VR environment, Seeing a Unity pro demo Timeline and Post Processing in the booth for about 15-20 minutes, watching Floyd Norman be interviewed as the featured Keynote guest and seeing all the advancements in computer graphics from realtime rendering to AI driven talk shows (Meet Mike).
Production Progress
Ongoing Task: Camera Movement
Although I was gone much of the week for Siggraph, I still managed to get some time behind the screen in the evenings. I continued working on my camera flythrough and tweaking the motion settings. This has proved to be very time consuming and ultimately I had to change the layout of the whole setting, in order to remove some of the turns and curves. The challenge I've run into is making the camera turn slowly and smoothly, without the potential for making one nauseous. Also, with the movement too slow, the piece can get boring very quickly. There is a real trick to getting the camera movement just right.
Task: Build Out Scene Transitions and Loading
Task: Build Out Scene Transitions and Loading
Initially, I ran into a bit of a challenge in trying to get the scenes to fade out as I loaded the next scene, but ultimately this was resolved with an Asset Store plugin that works beautifully. I am fading out one scene and moving to a 'staging' scene as the next one loads. It took me a little while to get this system set up and working the way I'd intended, but I eventually it worked and it works quite well. Fortunately, this feature only took about a day to resolve and I've been able clear this from the list!
Task: Output First Standalone Build
After the Open Office Hours call on Friday, my goal was to build my project in its current state and see how well it ran and what the file size was. Well, I ran into a bunch of issues. The first time I initiated a build, Unity halted on several errors before any compiling began.
Turns out, there were a few shaders that weren't compatible with 5.6.3 and a few other scripts. Fortunately, I was able to track down the culprits and delete them without any affect on the project. (TIP: If you run into compiler errors, always check for dependencies and references in ALL of your scenes. If none show up, then you should remove the script and see if it solves the error.) Unfortunately, buying plugins on the Unity Asset Store can be a roll-of-the-dice sometimes. Even if something was tested on Unity 5, it doesn't mean it will work with the latest version of Unity. Also, there may be conflicts with other scripts or plugins which may reference code with the same name. (This has happened to me several times.) Anyway, after tracking down the bad code and shaders, my project still wouldn't build! It would get to the end of the compile and Unity would crash. So, I finally did some Google research on the issue I was experiencing and it turns out that the Oculus Developer plug ins were the problem. (I'm not faulting Oculus here, but pointing out that the version I had was likely an older version or was not installed properly.) After deleting the OVR packages, the project finally compiled and output my first build!
