XR Carriage Ride | XR Brain Jam 2023

What it does

XR Carriage Ride is a 2 player cross-reality experience that puts one player into the perspective of a horse pulling a carriage through NYC while the other player determines the route across amusing (or distressing) attractions in the city.

Our Team

We are Team Equine Excellence, and we worked together to create XR Carriage Ride during the 2023 XR Brain Jam in New York City. 

Scott Tongue - UE Programmer, Horse Expert

Anna Kasunic - Producer, Designer

Erica Principe Cruz - Designer

Lorena Mueller - 2D Artist, Designer

Ezra Hill - Gameplay Programmer, Tech Artist, Designer

Marie Leung - 3D Artist, Designer, Programmer

Emily Xie - Concept, Level Designer

Our Goal

The experience we created aims to encourage empathy via embodied perspective-taking in Extended Reality technologies. We also endeavor to center the perspectives and experiences of beings beyond humans, such as animals. 

Physically situated in New York City during the jam and graced with a horse expert among us, we felt called to turn to the horses that pull carriages of tourists in the city. 

In the two-player experience we created, participants assume different roles: a human-centric experience controller in AR using the Tilt5, and an embodied horse experience in VR using the HTC Vive XR Elite, with resulting vastly different perspectives of the same situation. 

Player 1 takes on the role of the god-like city controller. From a bird’s eye perspective within Tilt 5, they can choose where the horse will travel in the city by moving the horse. The city scene features different “easter eggs” for Player 1 such as a fire station, a dog, and a crowd of enthusiastic tourists. When choosing a route that passes through one of these elements, a pleasant drawing appears for Player 1, providing a playful reward for certain choices. 

Meanwhile, Player 1’s choices directly impact Player 2’s experience, often in adverse ways. Player 2 embodies the horse that draws the carriage ride, and is devoid of agency in the experience. Player 2 views the world as a horse would. Based off research on horse perception and cognition, Player 2’s vision is limited in field of view and color, and auditory and visual signals are displayed in magnified and more stressful ways, when applicable.

 Player 1’s choices may lead Player 2 down streets that are especially noisy, high in exhaust fumes, or otherwise extremely distressing for a horse. Whereas Player 1 enjoys whimsical easter eggs thanks to their choices, Player 2 experiences frightening or distressing events. An ostensibly cute dog for Player 1 appears as a growling monster for Player 2; a charming crowd of tourists for Player 1 is a fear-inducing series of bright flashes and loud noises for Player 2.  Choices of the human-centric player directly impact the experience of the horse player.  

How we built it

We had two wonderful Unreal XR developers, one working on the basic interactions and network for the carriage rider user withTilt5 headset and the other one using Unreal Engine 's visual scripting system to set up the horse user's perspective and movement with HTC Vive XR Elite headset. Free assets found online are integrated in the vibrant city environment.

Challenges we ran into

Compatibility of device and hardware.  Some of our computers are not compatible connecting with the headsets, programming and network has been crashing constantly within two VR headsets, etc. Thus, we made an immersive simulation of our ideal prototype.

Accomplishments that we are proud of

We chose a specific self-other contrast by focusing on human actions and equine lived experiences, but we hope that this project can inspire players to consider power imbalances and build empathy for other beings.  We are proud that we've accomplished our goal and won an audience award for this project.