Between

Between is a virtual reality experience that imagines a human’s “after death experience.” The player acts as an old man who just died in his house and experiences the separation of his body and soul. He will be able to float in the house and
read his family’s mind to detect their mixed emotions toward his death. By exploring the items in the house, the player can also trace back to his memories in a vivid manner. In the end, the player will go through a mysterious process which will lead him to go to the afterlife. The whole experience aims to create an immersive experience between life and death, body and soul, good and evil, as well as between reality and memory.*

Platform: Oculus Rift

Team: NaiChen Yang, Xingjian An, Yiting Liu

Developed at ITP/NYU

Bloom

Bloom is an interactive and intimate romantic journey through death, dismemberment and gruesome self-sacrifice.

Platform: HTC Vive

Team: Will Wurtzebach, Rehmat Qadir

Bug Jazz Club

Bug Jazz Club: Follow a blue moth through the night and into a lighted sconce where bugs spend their last hours drinking and dancing.

Platform: Cardboard

Team: Lisa Beth Kovetz

Continuous Monument

Continuous Monument: During the 1960s Radical Architecture Movement, the Italian design studio, Superstudio, suggested that we should be cautious of architecture and design that exaggerates existing inequalities. Instead, they proposed a sort of anti-architecture. The Continuous Monument – a form that would connect people and geography around the world across a utopian grid. This project realizes their utopian vision in VR, and draws comparison against the conceptual proposition of another “continuous monument” – the southern border wall proposed by the impending presidency of the most widely criticized president-elect, ultimately posing the question – what do the monuments we build, fund, allow, say about our humanity, justice and morality?

Platform: Cardboard

Team: Claire Mitchell

Deconstructing 5Pointz

Deconstructing 5Pointz: Our experience will reconstruct the space of famed former graffiti haven 5Pointz. In the experience, a participant will be able to wander the grounds, and explore the history of this space through audio snippets from documentaries, radio and television, while at the same time facing the imminent destruction of the building in the wake of growing gentrification in Long Island City.

Platform: Gear VR, Cardboard

Team: Maxwell Foxman, So Sun Park

Endless Runner / Siege the Giant Lord

Endless runner / Siege the Giant Lord: Your avatar runs but red cubes block its way. Jump them or shoot them to keep running and running.

Platform: Cardboard

Team: Aubrey Tarmu (the lab’s youngest VR creator, 15 years old)

God’s On His Last Nerve

God’s On His Last Nerve is a short comedic Gear VR film set in Heaven observing the omniscient one on [his] daily routine, until an event so upsetting occurs that it impels him to whoosh down to earth with a warning. Shot with a Samsung Gear 360 from drones, weather balloons, and rooftops, viewers have a “God’s-eye view” as they hear a stentorian voice igniting volcanoes, admiring his creation in the Hudson Valley, and telling Matthew to listen to his mother. God’s seen it all, from the Crusades to WWII, but with the American election of Trump, humans have gone too far.

Platform: Gear VR

Team: Joanna Molloy

Lost & Found

“Lost & Found” is a virtual reality experience that will take viewers into the life of someone with dementia who’s beginning to have cognitive and physical challenges.

We begin the experience lost in Grand Central Station, there is a Silver Alert notifying the viewer that there is a missing vulnerable person. Through clicking on the clock we are then transported to the next scene. We enter a dimly lit room of an elderly individual. From the darkness, memories from their childhood begin to be projected on the walls around the viewer. As the viewer is immersed in these faded memories, we hear the audio of a person with early onset dementia talk about the experience of losing one’s memory. The goal of this project is to build an empathic connection to individuals living with dementia, and to raise awareness around their struggle.

Platform: Gear VR

Team: Jesse Ash & Phil Buccellato | Greener Media

Magical Mystery Times

Magical Mystery Times: In the real world, a physical installation sets up the stage. The VR headset is transformed into a submarine periscope. It is used to set the tone of the experience while exploring new ways of engaging in VR. Once users look through this periscope, they board the Yellow Submarine. There, they are part of a psychedelic world, filled with color and music. Users can also interact with different events, people or movements that marked the decade.

Team: Michelle Hessel

Developed at ITP/NYU

Swirlyyyy

Swirlyyyy is a VR music-action game. Players will enjoy a journey traveling through a colorful and changing tunnel with rings on the surface. Through simple real-time manipulation – going left and right, players are required to collide the rings to match the rhythm of the music ,making a perfect performance.

Platform: Gear VR, Cardboard

Team: Vivi Yu, Vanilla Liu , Zhuoyang Liu

The Myth Machine

The Myth Machine is a “tech-gothic” immersive mystery set in a near-future world of crumbling start-ups. A few years from now the American Dream is finally dead. The great digital golden age, when nerds were gods of industry was its last gasp. Startup offices are empty: bought out, liquidated, or simply left to rot.The only steady job — your job — is to sift through the leftovers. You are Mila, a broke college grad from an immigrant family trying to make a living. Your client wants you to inventory an old eccentric office space in search of some high-value tech. But what begins as a typical corporate salvage job becomes a descent into a century of illegal government research: mind manipulation, identity reconstruction, all to protect citizens against foreign influence. It gets inside your head and begins to drive you mad. Or is it setting you free? To find out, you must come face-to-face with The Myth Machine.

Team: Clara Fernandez-Vara, Matthew Weise

In development by professors at NYU Game Center

The Virtual Boutique

The Virtual Boutique bridges the gap between the digital and physical experiences of shopping by combining 3D scanning and immersive 360 video catwalks to address the ‘touch’ and ‘feel’ aspects of shopping respectively.

Users will be able to browse and interact with products in beautiful environments and finally be able to truly get a ‘real-world’ sense of the items they’re interested in buying.

Mobile platforms: Cardboard, Gear VR, DayDream

Team: Gwan Yip

To Be With Hamlet

To Be With Hamlet is a live theater performance in Virtual Reality that allows anybody anywhere to have an intimate experience with Hamlet, Shakespeare’s dramatic masterpiece. The experience enables audiences to walk the battlements of Elsinore Castle with Hamlet as he confronts the ghost of his murdered father.

Platform : HTC vive

Team: Javier Molina, David Gochfeld, Roger Casey, Zachary Koval