1) While at the VR Park in Dubai, take note of those aspects of the experience that feel particularly immersive and why. Are you engaged in the premise of the experience? What is your role and what do you get to do? Does light or sound play a distinctive part in making the experience compelling? Write about this as a blog post and be ready to share in class on Monday.
Last Friday, our class visited the VR Park (https://www.vrparkdubai.com/) in Dubai. For me, this was my first time going to a VR park in general, and so I was excited to see what was awaiting me.
The attraction I felt the most immersive was the “Dubai Drone” and the “VR Maze.” In the “Dubai Drone,” the player rides a roller coaster while putting the VR headset on. The roller coaster here is the drone. What was impressive was that the images in the VR perfectly matched the direction and path of the roller coaster. When the roller coaster made a turn, there was something visually in the VR which also required or prompted a turn. Because all of the scenes in this attraction had bright light, it posed a positive image of how Dubai will keep on developing in the future. The music also played a big role in emphasizing how exciting and optimistic Dubai’s future will be. Here, my role was simply sitting on the roller coaster/drone and viewing the futuristic scene of Dubai.
On the other hand, in the “VR Maze,” the player had more of an agency in controlling the speed to which the player in the VR moved, as well as which direction to move towards. This was because the player was not sitting in an attraction/roller coaster that had a specific route and pathway, but rather the player had to move in the VR space using his/her own feet. While it was a maze in the VR headset, when seeing the physical player space, it was simply a small box with a few walls placed in it. Before playing this game, I was watching other people play the game. Therefore, I kind of knew what I was expecting, and yet, I was quite shocked and scared when entering the VR maze world. The scene took place in a dungeon and there were skeleton skulls and spooky-looking objects. The dim lighting added to the environment and made it a spooky experience (at least for me because I am scared of ghosts, skulls, and anything that is “scary”). The music also added to this because I felt as if I was really inside a maze dungeon, trying to figure out a way out/escape.
