Virtual Haunted House
A horror experience utilizing motion capture. Users will secretly hit trigger points that cause a frightening sound or jump scare.
(Watch the video with sound by clicking the speaker icon in the corner)
Users would pick up a portable motion capture device and walk around the room. When they entered a small invisible physical perimeter, it would set off a scare. I primarily developed this project in MAX/MSP to read the motion capture input and trigger outputs. I also connected to Ableton and Resolume Arena through MAX/MSP to control audio and video, respectively.
Through Ableton and Reaper, I could utilize the space's surround sound system. This meant that the location the audio plays from could slowly pan around the room or come from a random place. In Resolume Arena, I played the looping background video (which I created in Premiere Pro) along with picking the exact places the jump scares occurred.
Early iterations of the project also included lights that changed from orange to red as you walked "deeper" into the experience. I, however, decided to cut this as I thought it distracted from the immersion and made the screen harder to see.
A screenshot of the core MAX/MSP file.