The core concept of this experiment was sound, but there is room for further experimentation in the implementation of that concept. For example, we used a variety of sprites to construct each stage of the menu, but another approach may have explored Unity’s built-in UI mechanics in a VR space. One advantage of our approach is that it allowed for greater control over the appearance of the menus, but with the obvious disadvantage that each aspect of the menu had to be built by hand.
On the more technical side of things, we agree that having a 2D “board” with menu commands, that changes the displayed UI based on what the user hits with the Vive wand, would work better as a subsystem than the foundational mechanic for a full game. It is worth noting that the menu buttons had to be rather large, which by extension meant that the menu board itself was also fairly large. This was because of the limited precision available with Vive wands. Because they are so much larger than, say, a mouse cursor, any UI elements the wands would interact with must also be large enough to accommodate the reduced precision. Consideration would also need to be given to the impact of such a large menu on the visibility of the rest of the game world. That is to say, the designers must keep in mind that if the player is interacting with this type of menu, they probably won’t be able to see much else until the menu is closed.
The system we ended up with was very intuitive, and also enjoyable to use, but we feel that even with the added immersion of VR, “Menu Navigation” isn’t compelling enough to drive an entire gameplay experience. This is reflected in the fact that this ended up being our smallest, simplest prototype.
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RIT VR Design 