Assignment 3 Report

Heights Exposure Training VR - KIT208 » Devlog

1 year ago by kiaric

Share this post:

Introduction

This application provides a tranquil setting for the user to climb a pillar at their own pace in virtual reality in order to face their fear of heights. The height of the pillar is at the user's control, as is the need for climbing- they can simply stand atop the pillar and change its height to expose themselves to their fears if they wish.

Description

The application sets the user down in a peaceful clearing where they are given a pillar to climb or stand atop with full control over the pillar's height, which is displayed on a floating billboard. If they wish to challenge themselves, they can turn on "climbing mode", which locks the pillar's height and makes a crown appear on the top of the pillar. Touching this crown sets them back on the ground instantly and displays the height they reached on the billboard (not necessarily accurate to real world metres).

The use case of this application is for exposure training in response to a fear of heights. It is designed to be as non-threatening as possible- the calm natural environment complete with forest sounds was chosen to promote calmness in the user (a well known effect, see Kim, et al. 2021) and there is no punishment for failure.

It is important that this application was designed for VR devices for immersive purposes. A stereoscopic headset provides more depth than a flat screen, and using VR, the user physically makes climbing motions to scale the pillar.

Interaction Design

The main interaction in the application is of course, the climbing, which is necessary to add a challenging element to the environment beneficial for creating exposure therapy scenarios in VR (Cahill, Salisbury & Bellei. 2020).

Another key interaction is the ability for the user to change the height of the pillar, which is key to giving a sense of control to them.

Other minor interactions include the crown goalpost in "climbing mode" and the button to enable the mode, which tie into the challenge element.

A storyboard showing how a user might adjust the climbing pillar to their needs and be able to climb to the top

Technical Development

The program was developed in Unity using the Oculus SDK intended to be built for Oculus virtual reality devices.
The program was tested on an Oculus Quest 2 headset and while intended to be run natively on the Quest 1 and 2 headsets, performance issues prevented this.

The user can use the Oculus touch controllers to walk around the environment (the left thumbstick), change the height of the pillar (the right thumbstick, moving it up and down), turn around (the right thumbstick, moving it left and right), climb (making climbing motions while touching the pillar with either controller while the grip button of the respective controller is held down), and interact with trigger objects (putting their hand through it).