Programming
Contribution
Programmer
Development TimeLine
2 weeks
Framework
Unity
Platform
HTC Vive
Description
Hamstar is a virtual reality experience where the guest is a hamster inside a hamster wheel which is essentially their transit to navigate around a tube city built in a room. The aim is to invite other hamsters spread across the room to a hamster party on the bed.
Our objective was to have the guest feel a sense of freedom by allowing the guest to maneuver across the room by entering the tube of their choice. The guest was allowed to roam around and explore the entire tube city along with being able to interact with objects like a spring, catapult and vacuum.
Constraints
Indirect control for someone who has not used the platform before to feel a strong sense of freedom.
Euler Angles
For this game, I would like to emphasize the difference between Euler angles and Quaternions.
The arbitrary orientation of a rigid body:
Depends on the direction(latitude θ and longitude Φ) at which it points and the amount of twist ψ.
Figure 1: Roll, yaw and pitch for an airplane which moves freely in all three dimensions.
Latitude: roll Longitude: pitch Twist: yaw
For latitude, longitude and twist, the positive direction follows the counterclockwise movement.
Figure 2: Variation in angles for latitude (counterclockwise direction).
Latitude and Longitude are enough to get the direction. Any change in any of the three types of motion affects the other two.
All three types of motion are enough to determine Euler angles. However, latitude, longitude and twist angles are not enough to specify quaternions because we need to find a specific way to get to a position.
Unity:
Every transform’s rotation is stored as quaternions. It consists of 4 components- x ,y ,z ,w.
Euler Angles are the rotations shown in the inspector window. y-x-z
Why Unity uses Quaternions instead of Euler Angles?
Issues with Euler Angles:
Gimbal lock: prevents incremental rotations from working correctly. Loss of one degree of freedom in a three-dimensional space. Two of the axis overlap which causes two of the rotations to occur in the same plane.
Cause of gimbal problems:
The object does not move in a straight line and causes it to have an unexpected arc. This is a problem as the unpredictable behaviour can cause complications.
References:
[1] Roll, pitch and yaw airplane diagram - http://howthingsfly.si.edu/flight-dynamics/roll-pitch-and-yaw
[2] Gimbal Lock - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc8b2Jo7mno
The game made it into Building Virtual Worlds festival and here are some memories of those amazing guests that played our game and embraced our cute silly theme!
MORE PROJECTS.
HAMSTAR
Want to know more about the Design side of this game?
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