This week, we continued to define what we wanted this project to do and feel like in preparation for Quarters next week. We settled on a theme of liminal spaces – spaces where reality seems slightly off, slightly shifted. These are often large, empty, or abandoned spaces, often dimly lit, and tend to have a very slight horror element. We felt this worked well with the project goals. Because liminal spaces are very open, it works very well with the multi-room project goal. Additionally, there is a sense that weird things happen in liminal spaces, which means we can integrate the magical moments we hope to go for. Finally, liminal means “occupying the position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.” This is how these spaces get their name – they seem to occupy the space between the real world and a slightly different reality. But, it works really well for our project as well, as mixed reality is all about existing in both the virtual and digital worlds, which will be a major pillar of our project. For these reasons, we decided that our team name would be Liminal.
We also continued to set up this week. We got our perforce folder set up so we can share project files. We set up Meta Quests for the whole team. We worked on an April Tag detector in Unity which works with a webcam to help with quick iteration and debugging. And, we started work on our half-sheet and poster design, which we decided would be centered around a liminal indoor pool, with colorful features in the pool representing our six team members. We presented this rough draft in a design meeting with Charles, and got some good feedback about branding and design.
Finally, we put together our Quarters presentation, clarifying our initial ideas for when faculty will visit our project room and provide early questions and feedback for us to think about as we went forward. We wanted to show our theming and mood board, along with the technology we believe will help us on our way. We hope to get good feedback about feasibility/scope and maybe some interesting directions to take the project within this theme!