Dust Productions took this project from concept to completion.  After meeting to understand the basic idea (is alcohol consumption affected by virtual confederates?) and requirements, we did research to make hardware and tech recommendations to accomplish the project goals.  We then broke those goals into actionable pieces in a collaborative planning session.  After presenting multiple options for the environment, we moved forward to customize and create what we see today.  After creating the environment, we moved on to implementing basic functionality for the VR hardware and avatar behaviors.  Next up was integrating the bluetooth scale.  From there, we added some menus for controlling and launching the simulation.

At this point, the simulation was tested, and we discovered and resolved some issues.  With this, we achieved our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) on time and below budget.  Because there was still some budget remaining, we were able to work on making improvements and adding nice-to-haves to the simulation.

The following year, the research team was eager to work with Dust Productions again to add some additional features and recreate their existing research lab in VR.  For this, Dust Productions brought in two amazing 3D artists to make their vision a reality.

The collaboration between the Dust Productions team and research team was vital.  The research team was able to provide schematics and countless reference images for our team to use.  We were able to provide weekly progress updates, from the initial block-out of the environment all the way to final texturing and lighting, down to even the labels on the bottles.  This project was an amazing undertaking, which will further dive into the relationship between human behavior in the virtual and real worlds.