VR Project Demonstrates How Animals See the World

Virtural Reality  

⯀ 'Into the Forest' is the first of three films exploring the making of 'In the Eyes of the Animal' - a virtual reality and 360 experience created by the design firm Marshmallow Laser Feast. The work introduces the rich context, background and inspiration for the work - the forest.

When London-based design studio Marshmallow Laser Feast wanted to create an application that let people reconnect with nature, they looked to virtual reality.

Creative Director Ersinhan Ersin took the stage at TNW Conference recently to demonstrate how and why they created the project, called In the Eyes of the Animal. The work was commissioned by Abandon Normal Devices and Forestry Commission England’s Forest Art Works.

Ersin started by showing a series of logos, and asked the audience if they recognized them. The entire audience did — they were universally identifiable. Then Ersin showed six different kinds of leaves, and only a handful of people recognized them. His point was that society has become focused on saving the planet, but we can’t even name a handful of leaves.

So Ersin and his Marshmallow Laser Feast team set out to change that, using virtual reality in nature.

The team formed a digital map of the landscape using 360-degree Lidar scanning. Then, they manipulated it to show how different animals would be viewing the surroundings.

Senses were extremely important in this project. Participants felt the forest floor beneath their feet, smelled the damp soil, and heard the rustling of leaves. These components heightened the overall experience by making it more immersive. 

With headsets, users can see a forest through the eyes of different animals and experience the sensations they feel.

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"How do you translate the sensation of a frog ribbiting into human senses?"

Ersin also explained how technology created the sensations we couldn’t feel on our own. “How do you translate the sensation of a frog ribbiting into human senses?” Ersin asked us. The answer is through a backpack that imitates the sound waves, letting you feel the ribbits, and the beating of wings as a dragonfly. Participants wore these during their 15-minute experience.

Check out the behind-the-scenes footage below to get more of a sense of the immersion the users experienced:

SOURCE  The Next Web

By  33rd Square