About The Project
Discover the Unseen World of Metro Vancouver is a VR project that showcases Metro Vancouver's services in the Lower Mainland using 360-degree videos. In this immersive experience, users can select a location of interest, be virtually transported there, and watch informative videos that bring the area's services to life.
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Research
The product primarily targets adults, aiming to acquaint them with Metro Vancouver's century-long endeavors. A major purpose of this product is to showcase community development efforts to residents and visitors of the region.
According to the research conducted by British Columbia's Government, the population in BC is older and has a lower fertility rate than the other provinces. The article also mentioned that non-permanent residents are 8.2% of the population and the international migrants expect to take 46% of the new jobs in the next 10 years. Based on this information, we came up with 3 different user personas to represent our target user including John.
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User Story
John stands as a representative of a sizable family in Vancouver and shares a similar level of VR experience as most users. Additionally, he holds the distinction of being the individual who has contributed the highest amount in taxes over the years.
The user story served as a visualization of the product design process. We illustrated a story about John and his family based on John's persona and crafted the experience from his perspective to highlight the product. Taking into account the potential crowds and queues at the PNE, we refined the user experience design during the user story sketch. For instance, we introduced educational videos for users to watch while waiting in line and implemented VR disinfection protocols.
A storyboarded user story video in the early design phase.
Challenge 1
ArcGIS Map
Integrating ArcGIS with Unity proved challenging as this was a software we had not worked with before. Specifically, there were issues with ArcGIS’ functionality and resolution in a VR setting. Through trial and error, we learned that creating a gap between the user and the map fixed many of the issues and it also helped to create the illusion that the ArcGIS map was 3D. In the end, we had the user appear as if they were flying over the map, as opposed to walking on the map.
Challenge 1
Teleportation
The addition of hand tracking also meant that traveling through the map had to be handled uniquely since we couldn’t use the buttons and joysticks on a VR controller. We developed a mini-map to solve this, which appears in the user’s palm and acts as a fast travel mechanism to move across the map.
Our main challenge in implementing this was precisely positioning the orbs at the locations on the map corresponding to the locations the client pointed out in the Google Earth link that he sent us. After some research, we learnt that ArcGIS Unity SDK provides special components for such use cases. The one that we needed to tackle the issue was ‘ArcGISLocation’ which positions objects in Unity on the map exactly at the coordinates provided.
Get to Know Us
Challenge 2
Prototype
Trailer
On boarding animation V2
Product-Recording