Slime Freighter

What is this?

This is a music video style VR experience made with A-Frame.

Credits

• Music: Side of the Road by @BigBlackDelta
• Literally everything else (except a lamp asset from Google Poly) by Ethan Rabb

Questions? Comments? Bugs? Job Offers? Cool Links? Angry Rants?

• Email: algoraphics@gmail.com
• Twitter: @algoraphics

Where can it run?

It’s currently featured on Supermedium!

If you can’t go see it there, it should also work on most laptops and desktop PCs, and VR headsets that work with those devices.
Mobile is currently not supported.

List of devices on which this is confirmed to work:

• Vive running with Firefox 10 on Windows 10
• Google Chrome on Windows 10
• Google Chrome on Ubuntu
• Google Chrome on OSX (Sierra)
• Safari on OSX (Sierra)
• Firefox 10 on Windows 10
• Firefox 10 on Ubuntu

Theoretically, it should work with Rift, Windows MR, etc, as long as you follow A-Frame conventions for getting WebVR to run.

How to use (Sorry for non-trivial instructions, it’s a new platform)

VR:

1. Have Firefox 10, or another browser which supports A-Frame VR.
2. Make sure your VR supported browser is closed. Not always necessary, but helps to prevent issues.
3. Start your VR headset (Boot up SteamVR, open Oculus Home, etc)
4. Open WebVR supported browser and load up Slime-Freighter.
5. Hit the button in the bottom-right corner to enter VR. Put on your headset.
6. Hold the center cursor over the start button.

2D:

1. Open a browser which supports A-Frame.
2. Load up Slime-Freighter.
3. Follow on-screen instructions. If you have a mouse, click the screen to lock your mouse to the “VR cursor”(gray circle). This is the same cursor VR users will control.
4. Hold the VR cursor over the start button.

Troubleshooting/FAQ:

• Refreshing the page will fix many problems:
  • Buttons out of place/missing, not responding to click/touch/hover, etc.
  • Seems like not everything has loaded (sky is white, main menu is missing, etc.)
  • The “Click to use VR cursor” prompt showing up in VR
• The screen is just…white.
  • If it still hasn’t loaded, make sure your browser supports A-Frame.
• Are those cones on the side of the road supposed to be streetlights?
  • If the streetlights aren’t loading, clearing your browser cache might help.
• Vive issues:
  • Cannot start SteamVR (app running):
    • Find your browser and call end process on it. Restart SteamVR.
    • If unsuccessful, close browsers and restart Steam.
    • Open browsers only after SteamVR has started up again.
  • Loading forever (from within VR, display may be working, glitched or frozen on desktop):
    • Refresh page and try again.
    • If that doesn’t help, restart your browser.
    • If that didn’t help either, close browser window, reboot SteamVR, then re-open browser.
  • Position seems way off (You should be in the center of the road, which is matched to the actual ground)
    • Exit browser, make sure your SteamVR home floor is correctly placed, then re-open browser.
• Performance:
  • Displaying the webpage on both your VR headset and desktop will hurt performance. Minimize the window on desktop or open another random tab instead.

Future Work:

• Would like to add controller support, interactivity with elements
  • Allow users to affect color or motion of worlds using controller/cursor?
• Add “Infinite” mode to worlds