ABB VR
The first-ever VR project for one of Istanbul's leading global agencies
About the client
ABB is a Swiss-Swedish multinational corporation headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, operating mainly in robotics, power, heavy electrical equipment, and automation technology areas. I worked with ABB Türkiye for this project.
About the project
I was commissioned by global advertising agency Havas Istanbul for their first-ever VR project to promote ABB's 4MW Inverter Container solution. The room-scale VR project was aimed to be viewed by the visitors of Solarex Istanbul 2018, a solar energy expo.
ABB Türkiye briefed Havas Istanbul for the promotion of their new 4MW Inverter Container solution for medium to large scale solar energy plants. The product is an all in one device packed into a container which serves as an easy install solar plant. The objective was to promote the product with all its' functionality to the visitors of Turkey's biggest solar power expo "Solarex 2018".
After a kick off meeting with both the agency and the client, a roadmap was set. Unity 3D was selected as the development because of fast prototyping and multiple platform export capabilities. Initially the experience was planned to work both on room scale VR and as a mobile VR project.
At the start of the project I was aware of our challenges to overcome. Delivering a portable but room scale VR experience was one of them. We chose HTC Vive as the target device for the expo and decided to render a 3D video of the experience journey to be later used on GearVR and Youtube.
Jan 2018 — May 2018
Services
Product Design
Interaction Design
VR App Development
Agency
Havas Istanbul
Client
ABB Turkey
Landing scene of the journey
Interactions and animations
The project required the creation of a detailed but optimized 3D model of the inverter product using technical drawings as a guide. For the production of the 3D models, I worked with Nezih Onur Gül. Onur's experience working on game ready assets helped us greatly. It was crucial for the project to deliver the sense of being inside the container product and operating it as such. To achieve the best result, we designed, tested, optimized and re-iterated the model production many times. The final result was a highly detailed but very optimized model of the product, working perfectly on HTC Vive.
Interaction design was the second big step. We designed a 5-minute virtual reality experience but left an open end for the visitors to spend as much time as they want. One of the biggest challenges in room-scale VR is locomotion. I used teleport functionality to pre-set drop zones which help as the trajectory for experiencing all of the functionalities of the inverter.
Once inside the container, the user can activate infoboxes, animations, and Turkish or English narration. To do that, the visitor needs to activate switches, open simulated device doors or drawers.
The project was highly appreciated during Solarex 2018 expo. A mobile 3D video version of the project was prepared and used by ABB salespeople with Samsung Gear VR for over a year.
Tools
Unity 3D
VRTK
Autodesk Maya
HTC Vive
Steam VR
Gear VR
3D Models
Nezih Onur Gül
