Alternative Energy
Intro.
This is my master's thesis for my MSc in Software Development, which I finished in september 2021. The main goal of the project was to motivate elderly to do activities by using Virtual Reality.
Abstract
One of the main problems elderly people have is loneliness and isolation. These problems are closely related to diseases such as anxiety, nervous conditions, depression and even chronic pain. These diseases are accelerators of the loss of the cognitive capacity of the elderly, causing them a sedentary, not very active life and, in general, poorer physical and mental health.
Virtual Reality environments can motivate activities such as recalling memories of familiar places or situations. Furthermore, it also allows the elderly to be teleported into situations that due to their limitations they could not visit otherwise, or allow them to carry out activities such as caring for pets that could motivate and generate an important improvement in their lives.
An important problem to take into account is the use of new technology by the elderly and especially the adaptation of techniques such as movement or manipulation of objects due to their cognitive and physical abilities. The objective of this project is to analyze how Virtual Reality can help older people to obtain a healthier life and to the designers to generate environments and experiences that can be adapted to the characteristics and limitations of this group of people. Another important objective would be to have tools to evaluate how elderly perceive these environments, in such a way that they will analyze the efficiency and effectiveness of the experiences using such important characteristics as immersion, fun, motivation, anxiety, etc.
Inspiration
Since I love simulation games, I got inspired by Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons and Stardew Valley games. There is also one VR game that I did not play but it was similar to my idea: Raccoon Lagoon VR.
Description of my work
I developed every piece of code of this project by my own. The art are assets I bought in the Unity Asset Store. There are a lot of systems build in this project:
Tools
In this project I used Unity for the development. The main platform of the game was VR systems, so I also used an Oculus Quest. Assets and other tools:
- Vivox
- Polygon Nature
- Polygon Town Pack
- Cute Pet
- XR Interaction Toolkit
Future work
I do not plan to continue the development of this projects because lack of time but I would like to start a new project and continue the idea of a farming simulation game, since it is one of my favourite genres of videogames.