University of Northampton VR Work

The 'University of Northampton VR Work' project was a paid industry work opportunity offered to develop supporting technology for Virtual Reality (VR) applications. This work opportunity spanned two months and was split into two stages.

• Stage One - Realistic VR Hand Pickup: At this stage, I was tasked with creating a realistic hand-pickup system for VR applications. This involved developing a system that enabled users to interact with virtual objects in a natural, intuitive way, simulating the experience of picking up and manipulating objects in the real world. This system respects the geometry of the object being picked up, avoiding the need for the user to perform unrealistic hand movements or contortions.
• Stage Two - Game Demonstration: In this stage, I was tasked with creating a VR game demonstration showcasing the realistic hand-pickup system developed in Stage One. The details of this game demonstration are not allowed to be disclosed at this time; however, this complex demonstration involved custom level and sound design, a comprehensive tutorial system, hand animations, and an inverse kinematic system for realistic finger movement.

This was my first time developing a game for a VR application, and I found the experience very rewarding. During this experience, I also learned more about the professional game development process and the importance of proper documentation, planning, and teamwork. In addition, in the second stage of this work opportunity, I was required to explore advanced game optimisation techniques for Unity, such as batching, Level of Detail (LOD), dynamic resolution scaling, simplified meshes and collision meshes, and static scene lighting.

Furthermore, this experience enabled me to explore a far more complex tutorial system than I had previously created, in which the player collaborates with an AI player to complete the game, featuring a custom dialogue system and inverse kinematics for realistic finger movement in the AI player. Overall, this was a very rewarding experience, and I am very proud of the work I produced during this work opportunity.