Citytrip: Bicycle + Oculus Rift interactive installation

Hi!

I made my first Unity project: an interactive installation called Citytrip.You use a bike and the Oculus Rift to ride around a VR-world and do stunts or just explore. You can see it in action here on vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/80559574

I used Uniduino to connect Unity to an arduino for the sensors on the bike. It uses a reed-switch on the back wheel that reads out magnets that are attached to the spokes to determine the speed. For steering we used an optical sensor that looks at a printed black to white gradient. Lastly there’s a simple button in the bicycle bell that makes you jump in-game.

The idea for this project came to us when we were playing with some of the projects other people had already made for the Oculus Rift. While the virtual reality of the Oculus Rift is very immersive, we noticed that moving around using a mouse and keyboard breaks down that immersion pretty quickly. The interaction and movement in the game world just doesn’t feel real, because you know you’re not moving. We wanted to create a project in which this disconnect between your movement and the virtual reality wasn’t an issue. After brainstorming for a bit we decided on using a bicycle as the way to interact with the world. A bicycle removes a lot of the disconnect of using a keyboard because it is a familiar way of moving for most people, making the interaction with the virtual world feel much more natural.

It was my first time using Unity and I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was get started in. From the first idea of making it, to a first proof of concept version that we showed in Amsterdam, to this version that will be shown in Rotterdam for 6 weeks took us about a month and a half.

Hope you like it!

Bas
http://front404.com

 

This is really awesome. Great job

 

Thanks Glad you like it!

 

Wow this is really cool. Very well done guys.

 

I have been wanting something like this for a while. I need to lose weight and I think this would be a great motivator.
What bike did you use?

 

Thanks! And any old bike will do really. For the first version we used a normal adult-sized bike. For the second version, that you see in the video, we used a smaller bike with an adjustable seat, so it would be comfortable for more people. I think it might be a Raleigh, but I'm not sure.

 

Is there variable resistance messages going from the simulator/game to the turbo trainer?
I would love to make one like this an hook it up to a mountain biking app.

 

I would love to see this with real world locations.

 

Smellydogs, no, we didn't have variable resistance. That would be awesome though. We took the resistance fly-wheel thing on the back wheel from a broken hometrainer, just to give it some resistance.

I agree that it would be interesting to see it with some real locations, nintari. We chose this type of environment because of constraints in time and because the guys making the world had to learn 3d-modelling and unity. While I can do 3D-modelling I am the only coder in the group, so I had to learn C# and Unity So we decided to make it in such a way that it would be as much fun to use as we could make it for now, and make it so we could change things in later versions.if we want to.

 

The sound in that video....scared me:sad: