GMU:Critical VR Lab II - Lab Work/Yu-Ting Lu

(not yet complete)Blue Belly Bike sharing- Imaginary future bike sharing service in Weimar Introduction:

The main topic of the project focus on the relationship between technology and mobility. The objective is to discuss how XR technology could be implemented on future cycling experience. The outcome of the project is about the imaginary future bike sharing system called “Blue Belly Bike” in Weimar in 2035. This documentation is mainly about how I use Unity to simulate the experience visually with some experiments.

Background:

What will the future mobility look like? How can we make transportation more sustainable? Technology plays an important role in the development of modern transportation. Topics like electric vehicles (EV), autonomous driving or underground tunnel based on new technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), cross reality (XR), became more and more popular. People tried to solved the current traffic problems by implementing the new technology. In recent year, people’s awareness of sustainability constantly rises, the voice of promoting sustainable mobility is also getting louder. Especially in 2020, the influences of COVID-19 push people to re-evaluate the relationship between human and the environment. According to statistic, the market of electric vehicles grows hugely in 2020, especially in Germany that it became the second biggest market after China. (Irle, 2021). Besides, the use of bicycle also boomed in 2020. 32% of people stated that they are cycling more due to the crisis (Haubold, 2020). In the meanwhile, the importance of technology and digital infrastructures become so obviously seen that people are depend their everyday life on it.

Experiment with camera:

Field of view "60" (normal setting)

Field of view "133" (video demo in the link at the bottom)

Entry scene also use field of view to increase the speed

1. Dynamic scene It is especially hard to make a dynamic 360 scene without taking the camera or equipment inside. Even with the support of stabilizer (gimbal), it is still a question how to hide the stabling axis from the camera. I planned to build a scene like riding a bike, however, I could not find proper equipment for stabilization. I tried to film in different methods, includes to film while riding a bike. It ended up that filming while walking with the software stabilization, video 2D editing and simulation of speed create the effect that I wanted. more stable and simulate the speed with “field of view” from the camera.

Shooting/ Instead of using a stabilizer and shooting it while riding a bike, which could block a huge button portion of the shooting, I used a simple tripod to hold the 360 camera while walking. Therefore, only the top of my head and some black spot from the tripod should be erased.

Stabilization and editing/ After Effect is the main software I used to edit and prepare the 360 video for Unity. I use camera analysis for stabilization and 2D edit to erase the top of my head and the shadow away.

Speed simulation/ Since the video was film when walking, the speed is too slow for a cycling simulation. In the case, the “field of view” of the camera in Unity create a good visual effect of speed. Even though the image/ video is stretched on the side, the front view looks more spacious and make the illusion of moving forward faster.

Project File and Video Demo: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vXwTOpUzUeeVzuxktVndXnd_EaUgPhsR?usp=sharing