Some reflection of the VR Viewmaster project:
I am happy that, for the most part, the idea of “child’s perspective” came through strongly in the piece to those who tried it. I was intrigued by the responses to the three environments as a series. I purposefully mixed up the order in which they were presented because two me the environments were more like memory snapshots. It’s interesting how maybe the number “three” or the presentation of something one after another made my classmates search for an underlying narrative. I always thought of viewfinders as a transportive device that took you to many disconnected places, or in other words, the more different the pictures were, the more fun it was to keep flipping through. I wanted to carry that over into my own work and connect them more by theme. In the future, I will try to provide some on-boarding before people start an experience.
I had many technical problems. A lot of titled cameras, sometimes exaggerated on purpose but sometimes by accident. Moving forward I need to test in the headset regularly throughout my process of making. My biggest frustration which my classmates didn’t actually seem to mind, was that the car was see-through. I had really wanted to make that space enclosed, but it ends up having kind of the opposite effect. I think the transparency has to do with the type of model I imported. I’d like to know more about models and what properties allow for a successful transfer to Unity.
Overall, I am happy that I was successful in creating 3 separate environments that elicit a similar theme of feeling. I definitely want to challenge myself to create more provocative emotion and present with technical polish.