Exploring the Burning Ground
Immersive Experience about the Geological Survey
that set Yellowstone as the first National Park
“Experience alongside early explorers and witness the unspoiled grandeur that shaped America's vision of itself.“
It is a story about William Henry Jackson’s journey at Yellowstone in 1872.
Exploring the Burning Ground is a virtual reality experience that teleports users to the heart of the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871, an expedition that explored the wild landscapes of what would later become Yellowstone National Park.
Team:
Hao Zhong
Role:
Researcher
Storytelling
Unity Developer
Visual Assets Designer
Tools:
Project Timeline
-
Build the Desert scene
Build the Waterfall scene
Build the Overlook mountain valley scene
Build the Saloon & newspaper mission scene
Build the film development lab scene
-
Save the Rendered cube as photos in the lab, (create image gallery)
Create Newspaper mission dashboard
Add voice overs and instructions
Test on headsets and adjust Unity assets accordingly
Make sure the raycasting function and detecting the right target to shoot
-
Design UI and update game controls
User testing and collecting feedback
Change according to feedbacks
Add ending scene, and gallery
Debugging and preparing for presentation
Week 1 - 3
Basic Scene set up and film development simulation
In the first week, I set up the basic scene in the canyon and created a camera that is upside down to mimic the vintage viewfinders.
Second, I tested the post-processing to see if it could simulate the film development process; I wanted a completely dark plate turned from black to white in a few seconds
Third, I purchased a saloon scene for the introduction and storytelling.
Research
Week 4 & 5
Week 6 -10
Scene Building
and Passthrough Testing
Scene 2
Dawn
Storytelling of the geological survey
Using the camp to introduce the wagon, food, and team
provide music and ambient noise
Scene 4
Outdoor Film Lab
Pour developer solution to the plate
Stop the development process with water
Watch the film develop right in front of the users
Scene 1 Passthrough
Switch from the XR interaction toolkit to the Meta All-in-one SDK
Introduction
Tutorials of the four key steps of Wet-plate photography
MR for the purpose of familiarity and steps towards fully immersive
Scene 3
Canyon
Moving the Camera around
showing how the viewfinder is different from modern camera
showing the collaboration William Henry Jackson did with Thomas Moran
Week 10 to 12
Painful debuging
Unity Asset Went Wrong after deploying
It doesn’t support the multiple camera rendering in VR headsets. It would grey out one eye.
Unity Scene override when importing
I imported from my earlier project with the XR interaction toolkit to the Meta all-in-one project, but the scenes have the same name and the previously built scene overrode the latest scenes.
Week 13th Computing Day
User Feedbacks
IDSC Computing Day, University of Miami
“Version Control is key during the development phase, any small issue might cause bugs for the entire progress.”
— VESL
“Even though the introduction scene is great, it is better to have more interactions, audios, enable pouring interactions, and explanations.”
— Capstone Professor
Interactive Media Annual Showcase, School of Communication UM
“Recording the trailer video in the VR headset is risky because any movement could appears to be a violent shake in the video. It is better to recording in the Unity rather in headset alone.”
— Professor
“In terms of context and history, it would be better to include the history national parks not only the beginning, but also the rapid development period during the 1960s and 1970s”
— Professor
“If this project aims to be educational and appeals to high schools and colleges, it would be better to create another version of the webGL. Don’t limit yourself with only VR. ”
— Professor
Next Step:
WebGL
More sites of the Yellowstone National Park
Other objects like Byzantine incense holder