Interactive Documentary in Virtual Reality

VR technologies have introduced new forms of entertainment. This thesis presents an Interactive VR Documentary developed with the use of the latest VR Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) in the Unity game engine, representing a historical event, e.g., the Revolution of 1897 in Crete. It was created in collaboration with the Eleftherios Venizelos Foundation, who provided the historical guidance and the archived material. The thesis is focused on the technical implementation of the interactive VR application itself as well as the creation of a viewers’ – friendly experience. The technical implementation corresponds to interactive 3D programming, shading and rendering in order for the VR HMD to display the experience while reducing the motion sickness effect through geometric and rendering optimisation. Additionally, it includes the scripted mechanics for multiple interconnected triggering events and the optimized scene transitions while the whole experience is displayed, in stereo, on a cutting edge HMD. Historical narrations and subtitles mechanics have been created. In collaboration with the Eleftherios Venizelos Foundation, we have created the screenplay of the Interactive Documentary and the historical narrations based on journals of the era, resulting to an aesthetic result of high educational value. The narrations were recorded with trained actors and implemented in the thesis for a natural flow of the story. The purpose of the thesis is to transform the viewers from passive spectators to active ones, with the use of the Virtual Reality technology.