KIT724 Assignment3 -VR-Report
A Report on the “Safely Save Darkness” VR Application
1. Introduction
The “Safely Save Darkness” application is a kind of virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) to treat patients who have the fear of darkness. To make patients feel safe and reduce their scariness during practice, this application provides different light levels and a flashlight with multiple virtual environments that patients are familiar with, such as home, school, office buildings, and shopping centres.
2. Application Description
Fear of darkness is a common psychological problem affecting people’s daily activities and sleep. It could turn into serious Nyctophobia if not treated well (Levos & Zacchilli 2015). The popular treatments include cognitive behavioural therapy, exposure and medications (Garcia 2017), but some patients resist participating in exposure therapy, they feel insecure and concerned in the unfamiliar therapy room sometimes. An unpleasant treatment experience could cause a negative psychological effect and make the therapy process even harder.
Virtual reality technology could provide a more immersive, safe, private, and controllable treatment environment (Bush 2008). Lots of VRET research shows promising results in treating specific phobias (Eslami, Mirzahajialian & Karbasi 2015). The “Safely Save Darkness” application designs various lifelike scenes to reduce patients’ anxiety and resistance, they can choose and practice in different environments like home, office, elevator, in city streets etc. With further development, users will be able to customize the scenes to be exactly the same as in real life. Aiming to encourage patients to practice and make them feel mentally secure, users can take the therapy at home, have total control of the light levels and decide the duration time if they want.
3. Interaction Design
To meet varying degrees of requirements of patients, there are five levels of lights are set from light to dark, each level is 20% darker than the previous one. Users can switch the light anytime or set a timer alert to increase the duration progressively. There is a flashlight available in case users feel panic. Users can walk around, sit down, grab things, open and close doors, and make some other movements that are relevant in the scenes. Compared to traditional exposure theory, patients could experience more interactions in different complicated environments with fewer concerns in the “Safely Save Darkness”.
A storyboard illustrating one of the use cases in the application is shown below:
4. Technical Development
The submitted project is developed with Unity (3D) and Oculus headset. It demonstrates parts interactions of “Safely Save Darkness.” When users put the headset on and start the application, they will be in a common living room of a house, they can walk around the room and check the surroundings. There will be a light mode menu display in front of users with three options, which are shimmer, warm light and bright. As shown in Figures 1, 2 and 3, the shimmer mode simulates the situation of lights off or natural dark at night, the warm light mode simulates the situation of warm lights on, and the bright mode simulates white lights on or natural lights in daytime. Users can switch between different modes with the primary index trigger on the left touch controller.
5. Descriptions of 3D Models
Figure 5. is a small thumbnail image of the 3D models used. The living room model is very alike the common environment in real life, including the furniture, windows and their positions. The flashlight is a normal one that people can see everywhere. These two models make the scene of the demo project very ordinary, users will not feel surprised and will be easy to get into it.
6. References
Bush, J 2008, ‘Viability of virtual reality exposure therapy as a treatment alternative’, Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 1032-1040.
Eslami, M, Mirzahajialian, HR & Karbasi, A 2015, ‘Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for the Treatment of Darkness Phobia,’ Journal of Simulation and Analysis of Novel Technologies in Mechanical Engineering, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 97-107.
Garcia, R 2017, ‘Neurobiology of fear and specific phobias,’ Learning & Memory, vol. 24, no. 9, pp. 462-471.
Levos, J & Zacchilli, TL 2015, ‘Nyctophobia: from imagined to realistic fears of the dark’, Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 102-110.
Living room model:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/props/apartment-kit-124055
Flashlight model:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/props/electronics/flashlight-2-0-tactic...
Hospital room of storyboard:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/35/16/dc/3516dc2df43fe05a20149c95f412db9a.jp
Living room of storyboard:
https://static.vecteezy.com/system/resources/previews/002/988/454/original/livin...
Sad boy of storyboard:
https://cdn5.vectorstock.com/i/thumb-large/18/69/little-boy-cringe-face-cartoon-...
VR boy of storyboard:
https://media.istockphoto.com/vectors/cheerful-boy-wearing-vr-glasses-having-fun...
Smile boy of storyboard:
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