Leonardo Mussatto

./ 2021

Capsule - City VR

Piccadilly Circus through time: a VR archive prototype

Details

Tools
  • Blender
  • Unreal Engine
Team

Yoki Yu

Joseph Vaz Nicholas

Leonardo Mussatto

./ introduction

Capsule — City VR is a rough research prototype that lets users navigate Piccadilly Circus across three sample time periods using a VR headset. The prototype was developed during the two-month Media Frontiers module at the University of Westminster and was not intended as a final historical reconstruction, but rather as a learning experience and reflection on how virtual reconstruction can reveal the changing uses of an urban place rather than merely its appearance. A place is indeed not only defined by its architecture, but also acquires meaning according to the use people make of it. Conceptually, the project focuses on the layering of animations, soundscapes and interactivity so users can perceive how human activity shaped the location across eras.

The prototype offers three sample “periods” users can load and navigate using a Steam VR compatible headset and controllers:

  • Present: photogrammetry-derived geometry with contemporary city sounds.
  • Past (rural): reconstructed low-density scene with ambient natural sounds.
  • Future (speculative): a futuristic scene created combining 3D models and samples.

This project deliberately trades archival completeness for experiential testing and technical learning; its visual and historical fidelity is intentionally provisional.

./ development

Photogrammetry

  1. Capture

    Canon DSLR; roughly 500 images taken on a bright, overcast day for even lighting

  2. Processing

    Agisoft Metashape for alignment, dense cloud generation and mesh extraction

  3. Clean-Up

    manual removal of spurious points, mesh simplification/decimation to create real-time friendly geometry

Image Gallery

./ development

VR Scenes

  • Periods
    • Present: photogrammetry geometry + contemporary urban soundscape
    • Past: low-density rural scene informed by general historical reference (not a precise archival reconstruction)
    • Future: proof-of-concept speculative scene assembled from models under creative commons
  • Interaction & Navigation
    • Locomotion combines teleportation and a sensor-based movement
    • Period switching occurs via a human-sized “capsule” and an in-scene selection widget.
  • Audio Spatialisation

    Steam Audio in Unreal Engine for cues and ambience. Sound design emphasizes contrast between periods (traffic vs. natural sounds) and creating points of interest

Image Gallery

./ outcome

  • What should be improved
    • The lack of prior technical knowledge and the short project timeline limited depth of historical research, visual fidelity, and completion.
    • The prototype is visually rough and not historically complete: some photogrammetry reconstructions are partial and historical elements are generic rather than archival;
    • Animated models and historically accurate crowd/traffic behaviours were not implemented, although this was the conceptual centrepiece of the project.
  • What worked
    • Photogrammetry delivered site-specific models for the present scene that accelerated environment-building.
    • Unreal Engine provided a capable VR pipeline and spatial audio tools that allowed us to quickly prototype immersive scenes