MegaSpace: Procedural Performance and Audience Agency
Project partners: University of Bristol, University of the West of England, Rob Brooks, Steven Vargas
XR Network+ is supporting a collaboration led by Melbourne Gardner, Visual Effects Supervisor at the University of Bristol that is creating a new prototype Virtual Production (VP) tool to explore human and motion capture interaction in an immersive experience.
The project team is developing a prototype that combines tracking, real-time graphics, motion capture, physical player input, and biometric techniques. The new tool will enable a wealth of interactives between participants, performers, operators, digital characters and the physical and virtual environments.
The prototype will allow participants to interact directly with a digital world through physical interactions. Insights from real time crowd data will enable operators to respond to participant interactions using their own controls. The collaboration is experimenting with technologies including thermal imaging, tracking and lidar to use as parameters for the operator and the virtual world.
By combining crowd data from those participating in the experience with an operator, the prototype will provide performers and the operational team with data that they can play with to further enhance the immersive experience.
The prototype is being built using the Reality Emulator, Vicon MoCap system and 360 audio sound system at the state-of-the-art MyWorld research and development facility. The project team is focused on using cutting edge technology to make the tool scalable, flexible and accessible to newer developers.
The team is using Unreal Engine to create real time environments and gameplay mechanics. In parallel they are developing custom-made devices and inputs for a variety of sensors and motors that will heighten immersion and interaction.
The prototype has potential applications across live performance and aims to change how we view VP and extended reality (XR) in these settings.
The project is one of twelve collaborations that received R&D funding from XR Network+ through the XR Labs Fund. The funding call awarded grants of up to £25,000 for university-led collaborations to develop extended reality prototypes using facilities at UK universities.
Categories: Games, Research, Technology