Discover the Unseen World of Metro Vancouver

The product is aimed at adults and introduces Metro Vancouver’s century of work. Its main purpose is to show residents and visitors how the region’s communities are being built.

BC Government research shows the province has an older population and a lower fertility rate than other provinces. Non-permanent residents make up 8.2% of the population, and international migrants are expected to fill 46% of new jobs over the next ten years. From this we wrote three personas for our target users, including John.

John represents a large Vancouver family and has about as much VR experience as most users. He has also paid the most in taxes over the years.

We storyboarded a day with John and his family and designed the experience from his point of view. Expecting crowds and queues at the PNE, we added educational videos to watch while waiting in line, and VR disinfection steps.

The ArcGIS map

Connecting ArcGIS to Unity was new to us, and the map’s resolution and behaviour in VR caused problems. Through trial and error we found that leaving a gap between the user and the map fixed most of them and made the map feel 3D. In the end the user flies over the map instead of walking on it.

Teleportation

Hand tracking meant users couldn’t move with controller buttons or joysticks. We built a mini-map that appears in the user’s palm and works as fast travel.

The hard part was placing the orbs exactly where the client had marked locations in Google Earth. The ArcGIS Unity SDK’s ArcGISLocation component positions objects at exact map coordinates, which solved it.