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Finding Emo

Finding Emo is an immersive VR experience where players step into a dark void and interact with seven glowing elements, each representing a different emotion.

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Overview

Finding Emo invites players into a mysterious virtual reality world built with Unity and Wwise, where the boundaries between sound, emotion, and environment blur. This project was created during the Virtual Music Space workshop at the Creative Media Summer School at UAS St. Pölten by a dedicated team of 13 composers and audio engineers and 3 developers and software engineers, realized within just 5 days.

The journey begins in a dark void, where players find themselves standing in shallow water. Before them, a strange energy fractures into seven glowing elements, each embodying a distinct emotion: anger, fear, joy, disgust, disdain, surprise, and grief. The experience starts with an enveloping room tone, but as players lift the glowing items from the water, each item reveals its own evocative soundtrack. The sounds become richer and more complex as the objects are rotated, introducing up to three additional layers of sound. Returning the objects to their initial state simplifies the sound to its base layer, and submerging them back into the water silences them entirely.

In this ever-changing sonic landscape, players are free to place and arrange the emotional elements as they wish, crafting their own personal symphony. Finding Emo is not a game; it’s an exploration of emotion through sound and interaction, offering a deeply personal and reflective VR experience where every choice alters the auditory and visual tapestry around them.

Development

Finding Emo utilizes Unity with the XR Interaction Toolkit, incorporating hand tracking for enhanced interactivity. The audio environment is managed using Wwise as the audio middleware. Each emotional element continuously plays its soundtrack, which is low-passed and silenced when submerged underwater.

The rotational movement of each element is tracked and linked to a Wwise RTPC, modulating the intensity of additional sound layers. Spatial audio is achieved using the Reflect and Convolution Reverb plugins, with rendering and binauralization handled by the Meta XR Presence SDK, ensuring a fully immersive auditory experience.

Team

Audio

  • Kaiser Gabriel - Audio Lead
  • Askar Ali & Pfeiffer Lukas - Disdain
  • Dzehverovic Alma - Fear
  • Kaiser Gabriel & Artner Dominik - Disgust
  • Mayer Konstantin - Grief
  • Moisl Jakob & Brandstetter Mario - Anger
  • Schönfeldinger Leonie & Morgenroth Daniel - Surprise
  • Weber Désirée - Joy

Development & Implementation

  • Heinzl Lukas & Steinmetz Martin - Unity Development
  • Grill Cajetan - Audio Development & Implementation
  • Pfeiffer Paul - Wwise Implementation

Supervisors

  • Aichinger Thomas
  • Schmellenkamp Oliver