User testing

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Recently I began user testing on my prototype. I have been able to sample a variety of ages and levels of VR experience. A few things have surfaced repeatedly:

  • “Climbing the tree” (moving upwards via gaze teleportation to each sphere up and around the tree root) causes more than half the people to experience a feeling of vertigo and anxiety about heights. Users literally feel like they could fall.
    • To address this I plan to insert visual “platforms” in the shape of tree fungus that allows users to feel they are standing on something as they teleport
  • Some people prefer to stand, while three people age 60+ who also experience balance problems in real life prefer to sit
    • I will revise the Protocol research document to indicate that people will be asked if they prefer to sit or stand
  • Switching to the Oculus platform means that during development I need to be mindful there is now a cord coming from the headset, which could cause issues if users are expected to continuously turn around (spiral pattern moving upwards)
  • Almost everyone responded positively to the music used in the scene.
    • I plan to add additional musical elements, like bells or chimes as users interact with the scene
  • Most people seemed confused by the method of gaze navigation; it had to be verbally explained to them
    • I plan to add an introductory level that demonstrates gaze navigation, and also add animated assets that guide the user by drawing their gaze to the appropriate area
  • Not everyone is comfortable enough with VR to even want to try it. People who are uncomfortable with “video games” or those who have motion sickness concerns will most likely choose not to participate.

Teleportation navigation

Posted by admin

This week I continued to develop the gaze navigation system. I created an Emissive (glowing) material for each of the seven spheres and place them in an upwards spiral pattern around the tree root. Near the base of the roots you can see the VR Pawn Actor which has a long “cursor” attached. When the player moves their head and the cursor encounters one of the spheres, the player teleports to that location.

I updated the tree to a more realistic looking bark texture, and tweaked some of the lighting settings from last time. I also added the mushrooms.

After tweaking the lighting, I used the Build Lighting feature, and received the error that I needed to set a “Lightmass Importance Volume,” which I did after looking up a brief tutorial. As you can see below, there are thousands of light calculations going on, which tends to slow down your game frame rate.

By placing a Lightmass Importance Volume, you can control where Unreal Engine puts most of its energy when calculating static lights, which improves performance. Below you can see much fewer instances of calculations.