LUNAR DETOUR BETA TESTING PHASE

Play-thru / Beta-testing at Massey Film Studies Dept



Play-thru / Beta-testing at VUW Psych VR-Tilt Lab

LUNAR DETOUR SCREEN GRABS

Beta-testing at NZ Game Dev Conference
Sep 26,27, 2025 Takina Wellington...

LUNAR DETOUR... A Cinematic VR + Motion Sim Adventure ~ 7+ Minutes

Beta-testing at NZ Game Dev Conference, September 26,27 - 2025
Showed ~50 people over the 2 days of the conference

Each scene involves a bit of walk-about exploration with a different motion-sim vehicle to ride on
- uses intuitive controller-less hand-tracking for interaction with buttons and objects

1. LUNAR LANDER

- get shook by the turbulence of stabiliser jets / tilt maneuvering / final touchdown on the moon
- After landing get up and walk around inside the craft 
- find the elevator button down to the Moon’s surface
- walk around the ships rockets / undercarriage
- find the button to deploy the Mechwalker

2. MECHWALKER ROBOT RIDE

- Take a seat on the crouched Mechwalker 
- activate "Stand up"
- go striding around on the moon using the 6d mouse controller built into the armrest
- activate 3 strategic mech-leaps to get over craters
- find the Moonbase elevator entry point
- take the elevator to Basement3
- walk around the corridor - peering into the different rooms (no security access)
- sleeping pods, endless corridor to latrines, grow room with hemp experiments
- find the LUCIDECK (Holodeck) workstation
- activate the NZ native bush environment
- activate the helicopter

3. HELICOPTER FLIGHT-SIM (vr in vr)

- climb into the helicopter
- activate the rotors
- fly up and around a NZ native bush river valley (Karapoti near Upper Hutt)

MILESTONES… June - September 2025 (2 person dev team)

☑ Realistic native bush simulation working in VR

- able to walk around in a convincingly realistic 3d environment mapped from a real place using latest techniques in computer graphics and photogrammetry “Gaussian Splatting”

☑ Virtual hand-tracking scripts for virtual buttons = no more handheld controllers!

☑ player and environment position tracking is extremely reliable

- the play space remains consistently locked so players can walk in the virtual space and climb on off the real tilt-chair

☑☑☑ Lunar Lander + Mechwalker + Helicopter flight sim control scripts for driving, recording and playback

- giving convincingly realistic shakes and shimmies to the passenger in sync with the visuals

☑ Incorporated all seated sims into virtual play space (2.4m x 2.4m) with central sim-chair position and roaming space all around

- for exploring and interacting with virtual buttons, navigating elevators / doorways - free roaming… ideally should be 4m x 4m or bigger

☑ Custom built numerous cg assets and environments, music and ambient sound fx

• 360 video of Moon approach and landing in Blender
  Moon surface terrain in Blender + Unity
  Interior + Exterior of Lunar Lander craft = Photoshop, Blender, Unity
  Mechwalker legs + custom chair in Blender, Photoshop
  Radar + Moonbase + functioning elevator in Blender
  Interior spaces = endless corridor, sleeping pods, grow room, workstation, vast cavern - using new depth map from images techniques
  Captured two NZ Native bush and river environments for the Helicopter sim, using Iphone, Drone, Postshot, Blender, Unity
  Music: Lunar lander, Mechwalker “symphonies”… several ambient loops
  And it all hangs together as a seamless continuous immersive experience
  

Next iteration: players will be able to back-track all the way to the lunar landing site, fix it and return to Earth

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OBSERVATIONS… after NZ Game Dev Conference - Sep26,27 - 2025

• Everybody loves full immersion

• Everybody loves motion sims

• Everybody loves hand tracking in VR.. Virtual hands are mesmerising

• Nobody got motion sick (out of 50 that tried it, none tapped out)

• Everybody valiantly struggled physically to enter the virtual helicopter - because of how it’s designed.. cockpit canopy is quite low.. but all managed to do it!! No age-limits to imagination and contortionism

• Kids spend a lot of time gazing at their virtual hands or randomly punching through virtual objects

• The bluetooth 6d mouse on the right armrest is very intuitive - everybody figured it out immediately… can be used as a button and as a shift / tilt / twist / controller.. Has 2 extra buttons

• Left armrest needs a throttle or more buttons or something

• entertaining.. huge potential for making virtual sci-fi drama series.. Recording actors performing their way through the simulation

• Potential for multiplayer motion sim - with 2 tilt chairs… 

• Feet trackers are in the works - to give the player a fully virtual body

• Helicopter sim could easily become a search and rescue or fire-fighting adventure in it’s own right

• Needs a regolith sand castle simulation - make a sand castle on the moon !

• Elevators are the best way to expand the explorable environment - re-orienting the player naturally - “exiting” and “entering” the same space after short transition… 

• Conferences are rowdy - destroying the spatial audio experience somewhat

NZGDC double booth: VUW Psych + Lucidtripper

VR Tilt-Lab: FPV 360 Drone + Motion-sim scenic flights in VR
Showed 90+ people over the 2 days (5min +- onboarding)

Seated FPV Drone flight-seeing experience... Also by Ed

Pack-out