Iactus Inc. - Final University project

For my final project at university, I wanted to create a VR game that could allow for a lot of traversal, without requiring much movement. I created a small gameplay demo to explore this idea in the form of iactus inc.

Initial Portals:

The portals used in iactus started as flatscreen portals created from unreal render targets, with systems that allowed me to interact with objects through them - creating a scalable baseline that I could then work from

Getting it 3D

The baseline portal tech that I had working was transitioned to VR via reading the headsets Pupil distance, and generating two (very lightweight) render targets that would filter their visibility to each eye - with this offset, and keeping them dynamic to match the orientation of the player’s headset, the illusion of a 3D portal was created.

Interacting with Portals

Each portal created has a volume surrounding it to find possible interactors - these interactors create dummy mesh positions (or in the player’s hands case, a fake player position) to properly track where the object would be relative to each portal. This allowed me to easily track whether we’d crossed any portal thresholds, and as a result, needed to teleport or offset any interactions.

The end result of this project was a small, playable demo with a single puzzle, that showcased how the player could utilise these portals to navigate an intricate space without the need to move, and proved out the functionality of stereo rendered portals in a performant manner.