Creating the virtual realm: Five essential ingredients for a successful VR experience

We experience the world not only through our eyes. Take a look at some deleted scenes from famous films and see how cold and unmoving these feel when we’re deprived of an atmospheric soundtrack or audio effects. Sound design is a fundamental part of the VR experience, but it is all too easy not to use sound to its full potential due to the focus on the visual.

Sound generates responses every bit as emotional as vision, and the two used in combination – particularly with well thought-out binaural sound – can be very powerful. The sense of immersion can feel complete for a user when we use background sounds and an atmosphere that moves as the user’s gaze moves. With this added immersion can come additional layers of emotional depth.

2. Presence

Objects in VR have a very tangible physical presence. This can make a user feel as if they could touch them – a powerful differentiator for VR from other media. Anything in the environment that feels unnatural will detract from this, and thus lessen that presence and the feeling of immersion.

3. Exploration

An immersive 360 experience needs to be as interesting behind the user’s eyes as it is in front of them. Give your user the time and opportunity to take it all in and explore. Understand how long you want them to remain within each environment you create, and design it accordingly. Anything restricted – whether movement or interaction – will potentially lessen immersion in the experience. Users need the freedom to move and explore as much as possible.

4. Navigation and interaction

Moving around our VR environment must feel as natural as the visuals make it look. Interaction must amplify the immersive sensations not compromise them. The use of external devices such as game controllers risks detaching the user from the virtual world – and quickly returning them to the real one.

Simple navigation can be done by tracking the user’s head movements. The user can trigger movement or action simply by looking at an object, which then serves as a call to action. Combining VR with a more natural navigation method (such as gesture) can provide a rich means of interaction while maintaining the immersion. The acquisition by Oculus of Nimble VR, and the work being done by Leap Motion in gesture interaction shows that this will become a standard approach in the very near future.

5. Look ahead

The VR field is advancing at incredible pace: new headsets, peripherals and techniques are constantly coming into the mainstream. This is a truly pioneering time, which means no sooner have you released your experience than you will see ways you could improve it. Where there is an opportunity to do so, do not hesitate to continually update your VR experience to incorporate new thinking and technology.

More importantly, having launched a VR experience, do not take what you have learned as gospel, but merely as the foundation of knowledge and expertise that will continue to expand as the field matures. Be prepared to look into the virtual realm with fresh eyes when you begin to think about your next project.

By focusing on these elements – whether they are part of the experience or part of the process you go through to create it – we hope you will find designing for VR to be hugely valuable and rewarding in itself.

The amazing things we see going on around us right now are only the tip of the iceberg. The possibilities are endless…

Andy Hood is head of emerging technologies and Resh Sidhu is creative director, both at AKQA