Immersive Realities

Jasmin Takayama, Zhishuang Liu

Iced Coffee

Imagine being a traveler alone in a snowy mountain range for a day. The night is getting dark, and the snow is falling heavily. Your phone has fallen off a cliff, the wind is hitting you in the face, and you are craving a cup of coffee. At the moment when you are frozen and desperate, you suddenly see a sign in the fog. A survival instinct prompts you to approach the sign, which leads you to a path with torches that could finally warm your freezing body…

Target & Reference

Our goal of the project is to take advantage of the game engine, namely the creation of atmosphere through lighting, sound, and animation, to develop a project that creates a dramatic sense of contrast between cold and warmth, danger and safety, evoking the original function of architecture in the minds of the viewers: protection and refuge from the dangerous nature.

To create the feeling of contrast, we took a scene from Hideo Kojima’s video game Death Stranding as a reference, in which the player, as a delivery worker, arrives at a warm little house on the top of a snow mountain with an electronic fireplace, library, and peaceful music after an extreme snowstorm and strong winds. Over the past few days, we’ve been familiarizing ourselves with Unity’s features to try and recreate that feeling with our self-designed cafe.

Achievements

During the work phase, we achieved a lot in technical terms: we built, set up, and furnished the models of the mountains and the café using ArchiCAD, Blender, and Unity, and we created the contrast between the cold, dangerous, and the warm, cozy environment with the help of light, sound, textures, and particle animation.

Challenges

Besides our achievements, we have also faced some challenges. We tried to script a command that controls the opening and closing of the doors to emphasize the threshold between the outer and inner environments, but unfortunately, we ran into some bugs, and the code didn’t run properly. Also, customizing the sound took more time than expected, and it sounded fragmented in the final presentation, which could be due to an overload of too many elements in the scene. Finally, the placement of the lighting was not only a challenge to the unit’s technical skills but also a test of our photographic skills. Thanks to Achilleas’ help, the baked lighting looked realistic enough to create a visually immersive feel to the entire scene.

Julian Ammann

La Vie en gris

You are on a cold street. You can hear sounds that are unfamiliar to you but also sounds that are unpleasantly familiar. It is foggy. Is there someone else with you? Or are you alone? You don’t know, and you don’t want to find out. So, you keep walking. You don’t know where to go, but anywhere is better than here. Maybe you dare to gaze into an alley, but you certainly don’t take a step into it. You see the lights of a car coming towards you. Is the car moving? Is that your salvation, or should you hide? But where? Is there someone behind that car urinating? Ew. You must get out of there, and the car doesn’t really reassure you. You don’t want to know who’s in
there.

But wait, what’s that? There’s actually still a light turned on at this late hour. And you can hear intimate music. They’re sure to welcome you. You enter the premise and immediately, you forget the inhospitable world outside. You are enveloped in warmth and security. You feel at home here. You listen to the pianist and her wonderful voice for a while. You no longer feel alone now that you are immersed in the conversations of unknown yet familiar voices and carried by the melody. You don’t even notice that you are the only person in the room…

Christiaan Tinbergen, Noah Hirschle

LOST IN THE OASIS

Our immersive reality project immerses you in a cold summer night somewhere in the desert.

You find yourself somewhere lost in the dunes at night. All of a sudden you see a sign, you hope it will lead you to a warm place. As you follow the signs, you find a small oasis full of palm trees and, finally, a warm light source. You start to approach the camp. You can hear the crackling of the fire. Someone seems to be sleeping in the tent, let’s not wake him up. You can hear music coming from somewhere, and you start to follow it. The sound leads you to a building; you can hear the hookah bubbling, tempted to take a puff after this exhausting journey. You walk through the arched entry, overwhelmed by the music and the coffee smell.

Going back to the campfire by the water – this seems like a good place to warm up and rest …

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Rifa Chowdhury, Myrsini Bozatzidi

Lighthouse Mystery

Our project is situated on an island in the middle of the ocean. The weather is gloomy, and you can hear the whistling wind and the rushing water. In the beginning, you find yourself on top of the lighthouse. Looking up, you can see the rotating lighthouse beam and hear the low sound of its mechanism. In the small room, you notice suspicious objects that indicate human presence. However, everything looks abandoned. Outside on the platform, it is hard to see due to the heavy fog. Even the lighthouse lantern cannot illuminate very far. The rusted wall lights on the inside illuminate your long descent down the metal staircase. The sounds of the windy weather from outside gradually increase. You step outside and you find yourself on a barren island. If you walk straight forward, you can step to the edge of a small cliff, where you can watch the ocean underneath. Climbing down a rocky staircase, you can step to the shore until the waves reach your feet. To your left lies a rundown fishing boat, and you can hear its rope creaking.

Sarani Kajendran, Shania Rectra

Visiting Hagrid

In our Harry Potter-based game, the player gets to experience Hagrid’s hut and the forbidden forest in an immersive way. Every Harry Potter fan is given the chance to experience the famous place digitally. The Player is given the elder wand, which helps them to see through the dark scene. Starting at Hagrid’s hut, the player enters the hut and experiences the inner space where he lives. The front door provides light, indicating the entrance. In the hut, the player is welcomed by a warm living place lighted by a fireplace. From there, the player can enter the second room of Hagrid’s hut, which leads to the hut’s backdoor. Leaving through the backdoor, the player enters the garden full of gigantic pumpkins, a crucial spot from the movies. The orange pumpkins lead to the forbidden forest. The forest is covered in fog and sounds of distant creatures. The hut is located on a sloped ground. In the distance, the Mountains of Hogwarts are faintly visible. A path leading up to Hogwarts is also visible, but it fades in the fog. The fog spreads across the scene, setting a gloomy and mysterious mood. The whole experience of the scene is accompanied by the famous Harry Potter theme song.

Giovanna Garbuglia, Flavia Zorrilla

Bienz Yanis, Benz Yanik

Ramon Stuck

Oliver Schiercher, Massimo Bühler