Solace

Solace is a seated virtual reality experience that explores narrative poetry as a design methodology for VR. Solace tells the story of Rima, a girl navigating loneliness at different stages in her life. The user navigates a 360° track that follows Rima’s journey through the desert in search of solace. Through the lens of Western and Emirati poetic techniques, the project employs onomatopoeic landscapes and spatial pacing to leverage VR’s sensory affordances to deepen emotional engagement and poetic immersion. 

The project was developed in the Unity Engine and built for both the Oculus Quest 2. Its animations were created in Harmony by ToonBoom and Unity’s Mecanim animation system. Solace was showcased at the 2023 New York University, Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Interactive Media Capstone Festival. A poster paper describing Solace’s design process will be presented at the EAI ArtsIT Interactivity & Game Creation Conference 2024.