Module 4: Designing a multi-user XR Experience
Few ideas for multi-user XR experiences
- Hangout for couples - XR app for couples to enjoy their company even when they aren't physically together
- Heritage Walk - Travel to historic sites with friends and an expert AI guide
- Talespin - Mixed Reality multiplayer game where your friends can 'teleport' to your room and fight a flight battle with you
1. Hangout for couples
With the promise of Augmented Reality headsets like Vision Pro and Quest 3, experiences where people can share togetherness in the spaces around them to feel the true sense of presence can be achieved. Couples who aren't physically together generally want to share their experiences and memories together, which is why an AR Hangout app can be an awesome way to bridge that distance.
Proxemics - Interactions between couples in real life can range from being together in public, social, personal to intimate space. This application will focus on creating remote experiences covering personal and intimate spaces like sharing their time at dinig table or in bedroom.
Locomotion Design -Since the app experience will largely be anchored around a shared spatial anchor like a table or bed and there's not a larger virtual world, so there won't be artificial locomotion like teleportation. It will only consider physical locomotion which will translate to the virtual world around the shared spatial anchor. The experience can be best viewed in surround orientation so that the couple can see other's avatar expressions and body poses.
Interpersonal Interactions - The application can allow the couples to play mini-games, sharing their memories of the day in form of images and videos, or even 3d-scans. It can also shift focus from tightly coupled to loosely coupled, allowing couples to do their respective activities at hand sharing togetherness over a shared playlist and consequential communication.
I also came across a very similar concept - Pillow by Lucas Rizzotto around the same concept.
You can find more details about this project in his Ted talk titled - Why I Built My Own Time Machine | Lucas Rizzotto | TED
2. Heritage Walk
Imagine travelling the world with your friends to historic places, or much better going to a place virtually first to plan out a trip with the assistance of an AI agent.
The AI agent can be a personified 3d avatar of ChatGPT trained specifically for historic sites and can respond to users in natural dialoge.
Apart from having the historic knowledge, it will have the ability to understand the spatial context, users' gestures, etc.
E.g. It will be able to respond to a query when someone asks about a monument just by pointing at it.
Proxemics - Typically would be a social experience, with a digital AI agent and fellow friends joining in a conversational orientation.
Locomotion Design -Since the app will allow the players to travel sites from all around the world. Each site will have a space that the group can visit. There can be different modes of locomotion. Together mode - this can allow the team to visit a site as a group much like how a group visits a site in real life with the AI agent by there side to answer any queries. They can get onboarded on a virtual platform together which can allow them to move together. The controls to move the platform can be on the platform itself.
But since they are in XR, the group can also move individually on there on in that space. In this mode players can physically walk within the guardian boundaries and teleport around in the virtual space to traverse. The AI agent will have to make its clones (instances) to be present with each player.Interpersonal Interactions - Consequential communication would be critical in this experience, as it allows people to accurately communicate about the site amongst each other and the AI agent to understand the spatial context. Users will also be able to capture photos and videos, or capture a 360 media and share amongst each other and social media. They can also maintain a virtual logbook to accumulate their memories.
Additional features - This can help the group not only explore the site virtually in their own time spatially but can also help them in planning, finding places of interest nearby, or to book tickets for flights and hotels ahead of the actual travel.
Some applications which allow to travel the world as precedents -
Brink Traveller
Wander
3. Talespin
A mixed reality remote multiplayer game with some inspirations from the world of Talespin. The host scans a part of their room like a table which later transforms into a miniature tabletop cityscape. Other players will join the game as pirates and will be flying biplanes, trying to take down the city while the host plays as a giant who's defending the base.
Proxemics - The players in this game would be playing in their social and personal spaces mostly remotely.
Locomotion Design - The host defending the base will be moving only through physical movement in their room. Pirates can choose to fly in their individual planes or team up in teams of 2. They can choose to become a Pilot or a Shooter (only if they teamup with a pilot). Pilot flies the plane to move around in the space and can drop bombs straight down, or shoot in a straight line. Shooters can shoot in all the directions but don't have control over the movement of plane.
Interpersonal Interactions - The goal of pirates is to take down the city within a set duration, while the defender needs to guard the city or eliminate the pirates within time.
Additional features - The game often also presents with powerups which can heal plane's health and have power-bullets that go out in a pattern. Defender has a shield which they can use to nullify bullets and a weaker bow and arrow to aim at the shooters.
Some precedents around multiplayer battle in XR -
Davigo
Panoptic