Hanging Gardens is a VRChat world created by Ally Hall, Josiah Morgan, and Maricel Reinhard for EMAR 391-003: Creating Augmented Worlds with Professor Anna Henson. This final project for the class was my favorite overall, combining the initial worldbuilding project with our learning experiences in social VR. My group drew inspiration from the Five Skies VRChat world, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and Ally's initial world design from earlier in the semester to develop our concept of a magical garden hanging in the sky. We wanted to create a pro-social space that is large enough to support both public and private social spaces. We also wanted to make the world as fun to explore as possible much like Five Skies. Ally, Maricel, and I probably spent 20 minutes exploring Five Skies and uncovering all of the secrets. Although our world might not be quite as complex, I'm still very proud of the interactions we implemented in this design sprint. Our interactions focus on interactable objects such as flower pickups. To see the flowers, users must find secrets hidden around the levels and place them on the corresponding pedestal, which triggers a script that instantiates the flowers. In addition to configuring the interactable elements, I was also responsible for the technical considerations of the project. I added invisible walls and slants over the stairs to better facilitate player locomotion within the scene. The entire world is outside, so it was important players couldn't fall off the sides. After we had completed the world, I rendered both the lighting and occlusion data to enhance performance. Occlusion culling helped lower the initially high polygon count to a more performant level.
