Sea And Life: Endless Chains Esperienza di realtà virtuale

Press Kit

Unique Properties

This is an immersive VR edutainment for primary and secondary students. It consists of two parts. The first part is Movie-Side, which is a documentary film of 360 degree to explain some marine environmental problems using detailed numbers and names of organisms. The second part is Game-Side which provides underwater immersive experience, fun of creature hunting, and confirmation of knowledge using quizzes with four choices.

Dimensions & Packaging

For VR goggles, OculusGo is adopted as an integrated type with low introduction cost and no need for PC connection.

Tags

VR, movie, film, game, edutainment, quiz, HMD, display, goggle, OculusGo, 360, ocean, sea, marine, animal, creature, life, plastic, garbage, waste

Production Technology

We used Unity as a development environment for VR applications and edited the video (CG) with Adobe PremierePro, Adobe AfterEffects, Autodesk Maya, etc. In particular, plug-ins for VR (Mettle Mantra VR series, GoPro VR series) were used extensively. For 360-degree shooting, I used GoPro Fusion for aerial photography, Kodak PIXPRO 4KVR360 for underwater, and RICOH THETA V and Panasonic GH5 on the ground.

Design Challenge

We have developed software that does not use the hand-held controller that comes with OculusGo in order to save time and effort in teaching how to use VR goggles. In particular, players can enter the answer for the 4-choice question just by the angle of the head (direction of sight line). Furthermore, in order to prevent children's VR sickness, we have made a direction that does not forcibly move the view. As a result, there were no children who felt ill while targeting more than 100 students.

Research

This project's main purpose is to enlighten children about various problems related to the ocean such as plastic waste and global warming, and was carried out with financial support from the Nippon Foundation.

Inspiration

Documentary film can be effective when you want young people to be interested in difficult social issues. However, knowledge is not established just by watching, so some kind of "confirmation" is necessary. At that time, if the school-like writing test is conducted, the students who scored low may lose interest in the issue. Therefore, I thought that it would be effective to use VR goggle, watch the video first, then try the game, and repeat these until getting enough score while having fun.

Project Duration

The project started in Tokyo from around January 2018. Over half a year, we did movie side filming in the seas around Japan, and produced game side in Tokyo. In September 2018, we held the first one-day event for all students at Hachiyama Junior High School in Tokyo. In October, a permanent exhibition was held for a month at Science Center for Children in Shibuya. If there is a request from an educational institution etc., we will still lend it.

Operation Flow

i) You wear the OculusGo, see a tutorial on how to play.
ii) Select the Movie or Game button.
iii) On the game-side, travel through the ocean looking for creatures. The questions will only be displayed when you find a particular one. You can continue until you find all or time out.
iv) You will be given one of the three titles of "Sea Friend" with 0 to 6 correct answers, "Sea Master" with 7 to 9 correct answers, and "Sea God" with Perfect. If you want to answer all correctly, you can try again.

Patents

(C) 2018 Sea VR Study Project Executive Committee

Image Credits

Image #1 : Designer & Director of Photography Shin Asaw, SnL_EC_mainimage, 2019.
Image #2 : Director of Videography Shin Asaw, optionalimage#1, 2019.
Image #3 : Director of Videography Shin Asaw, optionalimage#2, 2019.
Image #4 : Game Director Shin Asaw, optionalimage#3, 2019.
Image #5 : Director of Photography Shin Asaw, optionalimage#4, 2019.