CODE3202

Because of time constraints, Ive decided to keep the idea of using biometrics to create better iterations. However keeping the VR shooting game i made previously. After some research i realised geometry is very hard to create that evokes high levels of emotion, and without more indepth analysis i doubt i could create an experience that allows me to gather meaningful data. So ive changed the idea to color psychology instead. Basic measurements of the VR game - Accuracy - Reaction Time - Heart Rate Accuracy and heart rate has a direct correlation while total session time gives a general understanding of the session performance. When a person’s heart rate increases, there are physiological changes such as increased adrenaline that affect motor function, causing accuracy to decrease. Reaction time lets me record the user's time to target destruction, this combined with accuracy will give a better general reading as to how the user performed. Accuracy alone isnt e...

After speaking with Ben, Alessandra and Nicole I've decided to change the direction of my project a little bit to better suit an architectural project. Right now ive decided to scrap the shooter game in favor for an architectural visualization VR experience. The basic idea is the VR experience shows the user a preset list of maps ranging from house interiors to large buildings such as offices. The goal is to use biometric readings to highlight areas that the user feels comfortable or irritated at. This provides feedback for future iterations. By implementing this into an architectural project it could potentially speed up the design process. Problem now is since my research has shifted a bit i will need to look at how geometry affects people on an emotional level.

The muscle sensor arrived in the mail finally and im having second thoughts on implementing it into my game since the heart rate sensor isnt working perfectly yet. I still have to redesign the map to make it a lot more visually immersive as well as adding audio etc. The muscle sensor requires sodering and lots of debugging as shown here The module needs 3 sodered wires on 1 end to connect with the arduino, not sure if i have enough time to do that and test to see if it works perfectly The module also needs these electrode pads to work properly. These werent cheap too Basically how it works is you place these on an arm on top of where a major muscle would be and the black wire with another electrode on an area outside of them muscle. It detects changes through the differences between the 2 areas and reports with numbered values. 

So far the game works fine but im having trouble using all 3 sensors in the app so ill have it limit it to 1-2. At the moment im thinking of using heart rate and muscle activity since it would be fairly easy to use in unreal. Im starting to have doubts with the unreal plugin since its a little bit outdated, the values sent from the arduino is although accurate, unreal records every single tick and filtering all the incorrect readings will be really finicky. You can see from the video that only 1 spawner reads the heart rate and spawns correctly although all of them are set up to read from the same values and spawn with the same speed, this is something that i cant really fix as it is because of the inconsistencies with the plugin https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzutqBm8xJ6dUmRJeVJtb2Jvckk/view?usp=sharing

So far the tests with the pulse sensor was pretty successful, although the sensor itself isnt always accurate. It does measure a semi accurate heart rate but the positioning on the finger is pretty strict, if i dont secure it fully the readings jump all over the place. This reads the heart rate in raw numbers through the serial port. Issue is since it reads as raw numbers, if i connect more than 1 module ill have a really hard time discerning which number correlates with which module. For now ill just stick with heart rate since its the easiest to record. setting up speed as heart rate is fairly easy just put the bpm in as speed.