This virtual environment is an experiment to build a recreation of an existing environment with the added ability of quickly scrolling through different options for floor layout planning.
This was built using 3DS Max and Unity and run on the Oculus Rift. It was used to showcase the way that virtual reality could help designers and fabricators to come to better environmental design solutions quickly. It's was successfully tested to help visualize a large scale building facade that was being constructed inside this space. Using virtual reality we were able to give the design team a better understanding of how this object would fit in the space and how it would affect lighting and sight lines. This was something that would not have been as effective in a non-immersive viewer such as a 2D screen or a rendering. The end result was that the design team were able to confidently modify their plans for construction, adding a significant amount of area to the facade in the 3D model. The end result was very close to what had been tested virtually which meant that minimal modifications were needed, saving time and money.
In November of 2014 during the midst of the news about the Ebola crisis in West Africa, I was asked by Shift Labs to help organize a hackathon to prototype a 3D "Serious Game" simulator of an Ebola Treatment Unit. Our goal was to show how a 3D simulator could augment traditional training materials for health care workers headed out into the field. An ETU is a rapidly built hospital created to isolate Ebola and treat patients with the disease. The layout is designed to ensure maximum safety for health care workers. Due to the highly infectious nature of the diseases it is imperative that health care workers learn rigorous protocols and behaviors before entering the hospitals. To make matters more complicated, many of these workers would be coming from countries and environments vastly different than West Africa where the heat and humidity coupled with the significant protective equipment can make for a stifling and uncomfortable situation. With the ETU simulator our goal was to show not only some of the protocols that were being taught but to find ways to mimic the environmental effects such as heavy condensation on face masks and muffled sounds due to wearing a full hooded suit.
In two weeks I helped put together the project by organizing artists and developers from the Seattle games community who would be working hand in hand with health care workers familiar with Ebola, West African conditions, and training simulations.
Along with organizing the event, I built and collected a library of 3D assets, and laid out a recreation of an ETU in Unity, so that the project could move forward quickly.
In two days our team of about 25 people put together a functional demo and included some unique features such implementing a Microsoft Kinect to sound an alarm when a user would touch their face, helping them to understand and remember the range of safety precautions they would have to uphold. We also moved the project into Virtual Reality running on the Samsung Gear and demonstrated at CES as a potential use for the new technology.
The project was covered in multiple publications including, NPR, The Economist, Seattle's Geek Wire, and KOMO news.
Getting to know the team at the start of the project. Personal Protective Equipment can be seen in the foreground.
Ethan Abeles stepped up to the plate as a stellar project manager getting groups of very different professionals to work well together.
George Risi, Kate Hurley, and Russ Muscarella going through the rigorous steps of donning and doffing the PPE.
Developers and Artists putting in the hours to build the project.
Tim Reha testing out the project with the Samsung Gear on the Virtuix Omni treadmill at CES 2015
This is an experiment in Unity working on mimicking the lighting from a theatrical set in a realtime 3d environment. I was inspired by a photo I saw the London National Theater's production of the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime. The video is shot from my screen using my phone and sadly this project is lost on a dead flash drive, so a better video or information about the shaders is fading into memory, but I enjoyed this test in particular learning about lighting tools in Unity. To be as clear as possible, I had absolutely no role in the design, or production of this theatrical stage or production, but I did recreate it in 3D and run it in Unity. This project is solely used for self education purposes.
Photo, set design, and production by www.cinemeaartscenter.org
