Software
3d in Maya, game development in Unity
Company
Magnopus
Timing
However long you want to explore
Instructions UX
At the beginning, text suggests how to position yourself for the experience and then gives a tutorial on how to move in space, by assigning you little tasks.
Narration
There is a narrator that helps you understand how to move about. To learn about the space station you see these animated cards that explain what the item is. The people in the video cards are astronauts on the ISS and they are filmed on the real one.
Subtitles
The logo and instructions/credits done in a 3d/2d way. In the intro, the text zooms by you with the space station, but it is just the company logo.
Story Arch
It’s an exploring experience. The first bit is a tutorial on how to explore and move in the space with some tasks, the mission is essentially that you go around and learn about the space station.
Cinematography
Done with Unity at a very high quality. For the explanations, virtual cards appear in the space with a video embedded in the card, so the transition from game world to real is not jarring.
Framing
The shots were full environments, you have hands, but no body. What was incredible was the moving in space, you physically grabbed things and used your body’s momentum to push you through the virtual space. At first it took time to learn, but once you have the hang of it, the effect is pretty incredible since in space you don’t have gravity.
Color Palette
It was in color and realistically rendered as good as possible.
Composition
You are given tasks and explore all the spaces, it’s based on the real place, so there was no compositional setup. What was alarming was the scale of the station, in reality it is very small which I didn’t realise before.
Point of View
You are the protagonist, you move in the space and are given instructions. You can explore as you please which is nice, but I got bored a bit after getting the overview of the station. Everything is pretty much static so it was a bit claustrophobic.
Looking Around
You look all around and use your body. It was highly immersive and gave me slight vertigo. When you had to go to one part of the station, glowing arrows illuminated the path.
Storytelling
The training was fixed, but you go at your own pace. The exploring was entirely up to you.
Sound
It was immersive voice over sound, sound effects were mapped and placed in the space which encouraged me to turn and look around. There was no music to underscore this, but it was trying to recreate reality instead of creating a new kind of experience.
Physicality
The movement through the space was highly physical and quite real. It was a new kind of experience and was an essential part of the storytelling. Without this movement, the VR experience would have been boring.
EEL VR Storytelling Research 