empyrea ride
Empyrea, the city in the sky.
Using massive genetically modified trees named Giants, Empyrea rests upon these trees above the clouds.
Resting on the shoulders of Giants, Empyrea boasts cutting-edge altitude adjustment technology and the freshest air you’ll ever breathe.
As the first visitor to this new attraction, you’ll go up the elevator accompanied by Jetpack Jim, but make sure Myco doesn’t sneak onboard because fungi have a weird reaction to the altitude adjustment technology…
About
Empyrea Ride is an immersive 4D gaming experience, connected with 4D roller coaster seats and an unreal engine via Max/MSP and Arduino, to provide an incomparable virtual experience in an amusement park or theme park, just like Avatar Flight of Passage in Disney land, FL
Project created by Ziye Zhang and Eric Ding, 2023
Concept Design
mood color
reference images
Charactors & Scenes & storyboards
Characters of Story
From Original Cast - Myco
This creature was never allowed to go into high altitudes due to Myco’s weird reaction to the altitude adjustment technology, Myco’s had enough and wants to visit the sky city.
New Character - Jetpack Jim (short for Jimothy)
He is a Park Ranger Raccoon with a jetpack, Jimothy can fly alongside the theme ride to make sure nothing wrong happens, all while dropping facts about the history, technology, and science of the theme ride.
SCENEs
Scene 1: Surface World
Under the thick fog, there was almost no sunlight visible. The buildings are mainly rectangular, with apparent signs of industrialization.
Scene 2: Empyrea
The city that rests on the shoulders of Giants, Empyrea sits above the clouds with more futuristic but simple design. With god's rays to give it a heavenly atmosphere.
Scene 3: Free Fall
Due to being squeezed by the massive Myco, the bridge leading to Sky City broke. We will fall freely from the air. Fortunately, the branches and leaves of the Giant buffered us from falling directly to the ground.
Storyboards
Part 0: Introduce background
Part 1: Reverse bungee tower
Part 2: Downhill roller coaster
Production progress
Level Iterations
This is the first iteration sketch, which lays out all the basic scenes and items in the scene to view the entire process. Confirm that these processes can run perfectly in Unreal
In the second iteration sketch, we added basic background scenes, searched for the most suitable environment setting strategy through several different tests, and attempted to modify our background settings: the gloomy and neon-colored earth world, and the unreachable sky city on the tree
Assets building
We used SpeedTree - a tool specifically designed to generate trees to create our hero object, the Giant.
This software can also effectively support the design of the final sliding track. I created a roller coaster system that travels through the trees by surrounding them with thick vines.
Technology and Implementation
Real-time interactive communication between Unreal Engine and a roller coaster seat via OSC and VPN in MAX/MSP.
Process camera data via Blueprints and transmit it to the roller coaster seat through MAX/MSP