ISOBAR - Nowlab
ISOBAR is a global digital marketing agency, which is part of the Dentsu Aegis Network. Nowlab is its division that acts as a nexus for research, development, and innovation. In the summer of 2016, I worked as a VR developer at ISOBAR Nowlab.
During my time at Nowlab, my main responsibilities include:
(1) Research and develop for a client project - Wyndham Vacationality
(2) Research and develop for potential interesting VR projects
(3) Demo and get feedbacks on our VR projects for events like Games for Change
Wyndham Vacationality
What the project is?
(Photo Credit: isobar)
"The Isobar NowLab led the development of a photorealistic immersive roomscale VR experience that transports guests to three vacation destinations. "
For more information about this project, please visit this link
What I did in this project?
Research for ways to recreate a 3D environment
One of the main tasks of this project is to recreate the vacation destinations in the virtual world. So at the beginning of this project, along with other fellows at the Nowlab, I did a few experiments to get to know more on this subject:
Recreation of the Nowlab Office using Photogrammetry. I later had it mapped to the actual office. Credit: Initial photos for the recreation were taken by Leigh Christie.
Scan with Project Tango
Decimated result of a LIDAR scan
Research for ways to interact in this project
Another challenge in this project is to create a seamless experience for audiences to transport from one vacation destination to another vacation destination. So I tried to test out different possible ways for audiences to transport. Below is a simple example of one of the ways: player transport from one spot to another using an anywhere door.
Credit: HDRIs for skybox were from HDRIHaven
Actual development of this project
After the research period, we moved on to the actual development period. I mainly worked with another two developers, one motion designer, and one visual designer in this project. My main work was to develop for the interaction in VR while other developers focused on developing for networking for multiplayer and certain visual effects.
Potential Interesting VR projects
Besides working on the client project, my task was to create some proof-of-concepts VR projects. These projects were mainly created based on my personal research interests.
Paint with your words
Things that we say out loud in the real world is invisible.
If two people are having a conversation, no visual trace would be left behind after they leave the space.
I find aesthetic in visualizing the invisible trace that we leave in the real world.
Demo made with voice recognition in windows
Demo
My last responsibility in the Nowlab is to help demo our projects in events like Games for Change. It is a great opportunity for me to closely observe lots of users.
