Wednesday, 22 January, 2020 UTC
Summary
https://medium.com/media/efd811ca583c19ccf7c37396e2d0b40a/href
VR Design Review: Half and Half
by Mukul Agarwal
This is Part 1 of a series investigating the design of the Virtual Reality (VR) game Half an Half. This is one of the best designed VR games I have seen so far. I’ll be talking about the basic building blocks of this VR experience in this part — Avatars, Hand controllers, Locomotion, and Menu system.
Section 1: Avatars 😃
a) Full-body avatars in VRChat b) Squishy avatars in Half and HalfDesign
Social VR experiences use virtual avatars to represent the real-life body movements of a user. These avatars can range from bobbing heads with token hands to full-body avatars in VRChat. Current consumer-grade VR hardware only tracks a person’s head and hands, not their full-body movements, which makes it harder to show full-body avatars. Users can notice the unnatural movement of the torso, hips, and feet of another user in the VR environment. Half and Half has done a great job in solving this problem by abstracting the concept of a torso, hips and, feet into one single flexible body mass. The flexible body removes a user’s focus from the movements of bones and body parts and makes it easier to believe that other avatars are real people.
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Onboarding
First-time users (FTU) of the game need to be taught about their avatars and how they move to have a great experience. Half and Half uses progressive disclosure to teach the concept of avatar and movement to people who might be new to Virtual Reality.
When the user first enters the game, they are shown their hands as flexible attachments setting up the expectation of a flexible body. The ground they are standing on is reflective, giving them a glimpse into their avatar face and body and how others will perceive them. Finally, a reflection of their body originates at the horizon and moves closer towards them introducing the concept of multiplayer in the game and seeing other avatars. The mirrored avatar also gives the user a chance to observe the full-body movement of their avatar.
Section 2: Hand controllers 🙌🏽
The game does not show the hand controllers in the virtual world as it can take away from the feeling of presence for the user. This brings up a problem when teaching game controls to a user as they cannot see the buttons on the hand controllers that need to be pressed.
Half and Half tries to solve this problem by simplifying the controls — “Joystick” for teleportation, “Y” button for menu, and “Trigger” for selection. They surface a model of the hand controller as discussed below to teach the user about the “Y” button, but the model disappears as soon as the user has learned this action. This is not a good design decision as the user cannot distinguish between the “Y” vs the “X” button on the hand controller simply by touching the buttons. There needs to be some form of visual representation of the hand controllers in the game world.
Section 3: Locomotion🚶🏽♀️
This game has two different modes of locomotion — teleportation and swinging arms. The interaction design for teleportation has become pretty standard where you press the joystick forward to aim where you want to teleport and then you release the joystick to teleport there.
Teaching teleportation in Half and HalfTeleportation
This game uses a parabolic laser for teleportation as it has the advantage that you can’t accidentally travel miles in one teleportation step. It also slows down your perception of time inside the game as you have to spend more time going anywhere in the game.
Pulsating parabolic laser and teleportation spot in Half and HalfOne of the unique details of the game is the pulsating teleport beam and the spot. It’s not just a visual choice. The floor background on which the teleportation spot has to show up is solid in color and does not have texture. This makes it harder for the laser and the spot to be visible if the background is the same color as the laser. The game solves this problem by constantly changing the color of the laser beam so that it is always visible regardless of the background color. This also makes the beam feel alive adding to the fun and kid-oriented feel of the game. Another detail that you will notice is that when you get to your destination, your arms overshoot your avatar body. This is simulating inertia in the virtual world and these kinds of real-world cues are important for making the environment feel realistic and increasing the sense of immersion in the world.
Arm swinging locomotion in Half and HalfArm Swinging
An alternative way to locomote in this game is by swinging your arms around. This method is introduced to the user through a text note in the menu system. In this mechanism, you swing your arms as if you were walking, but you don’t move your feet. This lets you move in the game in the direction that you are facing. If you swing your arms faster, you will move faster. This is a slower form of movement than teleportation but has the advantage that the user does not lose the context of where they are as they do when they teleport. On the other hand, “arm swinging” is more prone to making users motion sick as compared to teleportation.
Section 4: Menu system 📄
Most games need a menu system to configure settings, exit out of the game or to change game levels. A menu needs to be accessible at any point during a game to allow the user to perform necessary actions. Menus in a 2D game can exist on the chrome of the window, or come up as an overlay while the game is paused in the background.
Overlay menu in Zelda–Breath of the WildAlternatively in VR, there is no chrome and pausing the game in VR with an overlay can take the user away from the experience and reduce the sense of immersion. There are a couple of ways to solve this problem:
- Diegetic menu — The menu acts as if it was part of the world. This could be a menu floating above a watch, a door, a pillar, etc. These types of menus keep the user in context and are great for preserving the sense of presence. They do not scale very well if you have to carry an object around all the time that does not align with the visual theme of your experience.
- Overlay menus — Create an overlay in the game environment, either dimming the environment or taking the user in a different environment. This takes the user out of context and thus reduces the sense of immersion. Use with extreme caution.
- World menu — A menu system that pops up into the world anywhere on demand. The difference from diegetic menus is that it does not feel like its a cohesive part of the world and does not interact with world elements. It has the advantage of keeping the user in the game, and not having to rely on in-game objects being available to the user to project a menu onto. It can feel out of place in the game though, so you must think about the edge cases like menu appearing behind the wall, etc.
Design
Half and Half takes the “World menu” approach and uses a circular portal with menu options appearing inside the portal. The portal also sets up the expectation that the menu items will not interact with the game world because they exist inside the portal. The menu spawns close to the floor, at a distance, facing the user so that it is readable at a comfortable neck angle for the user.
Onboarding
The user is taught how to open the menu by showing the hand controller for a brief amount of time with a set of instructions connected to the “Y” button using a flexible string. Once the user presses the “Y” button the hand controller disappears. Another great detail here is that the hand controller does not appear in the exact place as it is in the real world as that will lead to the controller appearing inside the hand. Our brain still perceives it as being attached to our hand as it moves with a one to one mapping of the real controller.
Section 5: Conclusion 👀
Half and Half is a very well designed experience with a lot of room to grow. We talked about the basic building blocks in a social VR experience — Avatars, Hand Controllers, Locomotion, and Menu systems. In Part 2 of this series, I will be talking about the social and community design of this game. Follow me to get updated when Part 2 is released next week.
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https://medium.com/media/1e1f2ee7654748bb938735cbca6f0fd3/hrefVR Design Review: Half and Half was originally published in AR/VR Journey: Augmented & Virtual Reality Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.