Make Decisions as the Mayor
Put yourself in the shoes of the mayor, who has to make a tough decision on what to do about Uber
See the consequences of your decision as a Mayor
See the changes in traffic, and attitude of the people
Choose whether to take a Uber, or a Taxi home!
And then face the consequences of your decision
Link to Video
The Uber VR Project has been designed around the HTC VIVE headset, and utilizes the leap motion hand detection system. Our video has been recorded in monoscopic view due to limitations in the current HTC Vive software. We invite you to download the project and experience it in VR yourself.
Link to Files
All files related to the project can be found on GitHub, which we used as our sole collaboration and syndication tool for the project.
Link to Sources
Considering this class does not have a focus on art asset creation, we used mostly consolidated assets. A list of these assets is provided for reference.
Motivation and Learning Objective Our goal and why we sought to accomplish it
The main focal point of our project is the ongoing debate between network based transportation services, like Uber, versus the taxi industry. It was made for the HTC Vive and Leap Motion. The hardware can track one’s movements throughout a 15 foot by 15 foot square and can track their hands in real-time. The player starts out in a mayor’s office, playing as the mayor. The mayor must make a decision whether to sign a bill to regulate Uber or not. The player makes this decision by shaking the hands of one of his or her advisors. This decision affects the number of taxis on the street. The next scene is bar scene where the player chooses to either go home in a taxi or in an Uber. If they choose taxi, they will see a drunk driving accident, as Uber has lowered drunk driving incidents, and eliminating them, would increase incidents. If they chose the Uber, they will see taxi drivers protesting. All during this experience, the user can interact with objects in the environment using their hands. By the end of the experience, the player should gain a better understanding of the Uber versus taxi debate.
Technology What we used to produce the project
Hardware wise, we used the HTC Vive with the leap motion camera to enable roomscale VR with hand tracking. We decided to use a handshake gesture to advance a scene, or show "agreement" with a virtual human, as the leap motion enabled this to work nicely, and it was cool. We automagically gained both position and orientation tracking from the HTC Vive, along with Stereoscopic 3d, although that is not shown in the video due to limits of our hardware. We used unity to create the scenes, and Mixamo to get the virtual human models.
Our Social Issue Uber Regulation
Our topic is pertaining to the ongoing debate between the two car ferrying services, taxis, and transportation network companies such as Uber. This is a hot button for debate because the taxi industry has been untouched for decades. Only recently has Uber begun to disrupt the industry. This poses a lot of problems as Uber puts a lot of taxi drivers out of work. On top of this, Uber is not regulated under any of the same laws or ordinances as the taxi industry is and as a result, is under scrutiny for unfair business practicers. On the flip side, the cheap cost of Uber has made ferrying more affordable for the general public. This has in turn, reduced the number of drunk driving accidents in the areas where Uber operates. This clash of positives and negatives between taxis and the transportation network companies has put a lot of administrative figures in a difficult situation where they are forced to make decisions on who to side with.
- Uber Reduces Drunk Driving
- Taxi Company Lobbying
- Uber being cheaper
- Misc interesting article
- Taxi Laws are Old, and anti competitive
- Deregulate both
- Jobs from uber
- Taxi lobby 3500 to 1 on uber
- There is also a slew of evidence for mass protests as a cause of Uber theatening the taxi industry:
- Here is a study talking about Uber's unfair businesss practices: Link
- 20,000 jobs created as a result from the rise of Uber: Link
- Potential for loss of taxi jobs as a result of Uber: Link
Misc. Notes and Features
- Hand tracking
- Advance to the next scene by interacting with the hands of a virtual humans, with your real hands
- Traffic in the street
- The amount of taxis in the traffic in the street changes based on decisions made
- Breakable pottery, and various objects that can be tossed around
- Animated humans to talk to
- Utilizes room scale VR