Our Adventure never stops!
Nijmegen Day
We went to Enjoy VR in Nijmegen on 14 November to get more inspiration from underwater VR games.
We realized that our underwater concept so far was not unique enough after experiencing several underwater games in VR. However, if we managed to integrate biofeedback in the underwater VR experience, that would be a big step forward in VR field.
After that, we went to VR LAB where we were asked to stand on a metal mesh and rebuild a new landscape of Nijmegen city in VR by replacing landmarks taken from other cities. People there who designed this interactive game shared their ideas about the importance of the metal mesh under user’s feet which created presence in the game due to haptic responses.
At a previous translate session we had contact with Joanneke Weerdmeester who works at the Radboud University Nijmegen. She gave us an opportunity to go to the university to receive feedback from a group of experts who are either experienced with EEG, therapy, game development, behavioral science, heart-rate or other sensors. Our initial idea was to incorporate heart-rate sensors and EEG in the concept to make an estimate of the emotion of the user so the environment could be adapted accordingly. Unfortunately the experts told us a few things that will change the concept drastically. They described that the problem with a VR headset is that it causes electrical interference with the EEG and therefore gives very inaccurate readings with a lot of noise. Furthermore, there are probably not a lot of people who are afraid of jellyfish or some of the other underwater phobia who actually go to a therapist to get help for this. This was a significant reality check moment.We had an upset evening and the emotion lasted even for a few coming days. However, smiles were still on our faces as you can see in the photo below. The other day, we started to rethink about our concepts and came up with a new concept which can be applied to art therapy. In addition, we decided not to go for EEG but take behavior responses into account in our concept.
Pending
On the coming Monday, Triple visited us in MediaLAB and we served Norwegian food for MediaLAB lunch. Reindeer meat gravy and sweet porridge dessert tasted not bad!
After a few days of a catch-up with Triple about our reality check in Nijmegen, we decided to continue our under water concept and focusing on our computational model that uses heart rate sensor as a biofeedback for now.
Tinkering
In the end of the week, with the help of some computer geeks from HvA, we tinkered heart rate sensors (Garmin & MioLINK & Arduino) and then found out that connecting these sensors to computers via bluetooth were not an easy job if we do not have enough knowledges of programing. Then we decided to give it a try on ANT+ instead of bluetooth to build a connection between heart rate sensor and Unity in our computational model. It turned out that it was not an easy job either!
“FAILURE IS SUCCESS IN PROGRESS.(Albert Einstein)”
We have to get up and keep trying!