Development log

•  Introduction

A museum is a place where we can find rare and valuable collections from around the world. In most cases, the museum is accessible to the public but in some cases, it is unavailable due to COVID or the problem of theft of rare items. So the goal of this virtual reality project is to provide people with the quality experiences of a museum through the VR headset where people can interact in the 3D environment,  same as in the actual museum.  

• Description of the application

This application provides immerse user experience of the museum without being physically in the real museum.  Being in a real museum is time-consuming and costly, that's why this application is very useful to all the people who want to get the experience of a 3D museum environment sitting at the home. This application provides a virtual environment of the museum where people can walk through the stairs and, interact with rare items and 3D objects with the help of virtual hands.  This application uses Oculus headsets and two-hand controllers for the interactions in the environment. 

What is the significance of your application in the context of your chosen scenario?

Technologies are advancing day by day. Traditionally, we are experiencing the museum on the computer's flat screen, on the TV, or the  AR. But they are not able to get as much as people's interest cause people are not getting most real-life experiences. People are not feeling anything through this technology cause they are only interacting with it with help of basic devices like a keyboard, mouse, joysticks, etc.  But this application provides real-life-like experiences where people feel like they are inside a real museum, and they are trying to interact inside with virtual hands because they can not figure out they are in the artificial environment. So this application provides the experience of visiting a museum without any cost and time to travel long distances. 

Significance of the interface technology:

In the context of my VR museum applications, Virtual reality provides an immersive environment where people can interact with the help of virtual hands and buttons which increases user engagement and creates unique experiences. The VR technology makes users feel that they experience real locations and heart real sounds and real things.  Using virtual reality they can explore the real-world museum.  Some people can not travel because of disability problems, however, they can have museum experiences sitting at the home.  Virtual reality provides virtual hands, buttons, and hand-grabbing mechanisms for real-life interactions in the museum. The VR provides real-life movement inside the museum which can not be experienced through other technology. 

• Interaction Design

The interactions in the applications of virtual museums are grabbing the objects and colliding with the items of the VR environment which shows the reactions in the virtual environment. It is done with the virtual hands and buttons. This interaction is needed inside the application because we need a real environment like experiences where people can feel things and observe them closely.  Interactions in the virtual museum provide massive user experiences. In a real-life museum, we can not throw the items and sometimes we can not even touch them, due to lack of this experience, we need VR interactions to fulfill people's desire to interact with the rare items. Because of this, we need active interactions in our virtual environment to bring real-life experiences. 

I have added the images to show the use case of the interface technology and the interaction(s) in my application. In this, we can see the user inside the virtual museum environment and interact with the 3D objects of the museum. 

In this image above user enters the virtual museum environment and can see the 3D objects and the wall with the photo and doors, windows, and stairs. 

While walking and moving through the environment user can see lots of museum objects as well as a tiger 3D object standing on the floor. 

In this image, we can see the virtual hand grabbing the tiger object from the floor by the user.

In this image, we can see the tiger laying down on the floor because the user grabs and throw a 3D object at the tiger. Likewise, we can interact with most of the 3d objects in museums. 

Proposed Interactions

- Grabbing Object:  This is important interaction in the Virtual environment because users must interact inside the virtual world. This function allows one to grab objects and change the locations of the object as well. 

- Virtual buttons: Virtual buttons allows to change of the characteristics of the object by pointing towards the object in the VR. 

-  Alarm:  This feature is necessary for the museum because people can break the item of the museum which is very rare. 

- Hand gesture: This interaction allows one to know real hand movements inside the virtual environment.

- Teleport: The user can teleport to certain locations during this interaction when necessary. 

• Technical Development

This application uses virtual reality technology and, it is made in the unity 3D software applications and, it is tested and run in the Oculus Quest 1 headset. 

On my museum applications, we can enter the virtual environment, and then we can move around the museum space with our virtual hands. We can use virtual hands to grab the objects, and we are even able to collide with the objects. 

How to engage with available interaction(s)

We can move around the virtual space using the thumb sticks of the controller which is in the middle. When we go near the object we collide with the object. With the help of grip buttons on the left and right hand, we can grab the items and, pressing x in the left and right hands release the items onto the floor. 

• Descriptions of 3D Models

These are the 3D models imported to my unity project.

These are the 3D object and 3D environment from the unity asset store.  They are called Art gallery Volume 1.  This environment allows users easily move inside the virtual space and see the rare museum 3D items.  The environment also has a photo on the wall. We can even move all the assets of this environment in the different palaces including the 3D objects as appropriate. 

This is a 3D image of the tiger which is inside the environment. We can interact with this tiger object in the virtual environment. 

• References

- Unity Asset Store. 2022. Art Gallery Vol.1. [online] Available at: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/art-gallery-vol-1-121479 [Accessed 18 September 2022].

- Unity Asset Store. 2016. Golden Tiger. [online] Available at: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/animals/mammals/golden-tiger... [Accessed 18 September 2022].