Flies in the Sky Concept
"Flies in the Sky" is an immersive augmented reality environment we developed for the Tsukuba University Empowerment Studio as guest researchers. The studio has a novel immersive display with the world's largest confined VR space, the so called LargeSpace. It is 25 meters long, 15 meters wide and 7.5 meters high, with stereo projections on all four walls and the entire floor.
Users can see three dimensional virtual stereo images within see-through 3D shatter glasses. Our Flies in the Sky software simulates a large amount of virtual flies that swarm around in the Large Space and react to the visitors in real time. We intended to create a sensation of unease and fascination, similar to the famous scene in Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds where people start to be attacked by big black birds (Hitchcock 1963). We decided to directly link the movement of our 3D flies to the position of the interacting person, so that the flies would follow and swarm around him or her.
To add complexity to the experience, we also linked the movement of the interacting person to that of clouds which we mapped onto the walls of the LargeSpace. This resulted in a slight feeling of distortion, which we found to be interesting and to enhance the feeling of immersion. The main control of the interaction is done by the person wearing the Xpand 3D glasses; he or she holds a custom-made tracking system that can capture his or her position and posture in 3D space.
An additional paper fan interface with an attached sensor was used to enable the interacting person to catch the virtual insects. In order to further intensify the sensation of immersion, we also implemented the buzzing sound of the insects, which becomes louder the nearer they come. Many visitors can interact with the virtual Flies in the Sky simultaneously, catching them, running away from them or organizing them into swarms.
© 2017, Laurent Mignonneau, Christa Sommerer, Hikaru Takatori, Hiroo Iwata
at the VR Large Space, Empowerment Informatics Laboratory, Tsukuba University, Japan
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