First off, I want to say thank you to Josh and Jay Villanueva for running Using UEFN to Build New Genres at GDC2024, and for Jay stepping in to present for the session. It was suggest that I post this follow up after asking my question during the session and having a great conversation afterwards.
TLDR; There is a great opportunity as the new camera tools and templates are implemented in the future to build these tools in a manner with will foster greater accessibility across all content. Specifically for how transitions and the Fixed Point Camera and the Fixed Angle Camera can allow people who have visually induced motion sickness (VIMS) when playing or viewing many three dimensional worlds.
It’s thought that 30-80% of our population is susceptible to experiencing visually induced motion sickness (VIMS) at a point in their lives. For some, it is more easily triggered and one of the causes is the motion of first person perspectives on screen. First person shooters and the fast motion inherit to playing FPS games are often a major trigger for VIMS. With the introduction of the new camera and movement tools, as well as the forthcoming templates, on the Public 2024 Roadmap, there is a great opportunity for Epic to build tools and workflows that will make more accessible games.
In conversation with Jay, he mentioned his high level of knowledge and experience addressing similar issues in his previous titles and engines, as well as the helpful knowledge that other team members had shared with him. It was a highlight of GDC, for me, to hear him speak about the steps he took on other projects to improve accessibility. I hope by creating this thread to keep this conversation going, and to engage others to add their knowledge and experience.
Background: This is very exciting to me, as I currently use UE5, Fortnite, and UEFN to teach college level game design courses. I’ve been teaching architecture course work for 20+ years using video game engines and more recently have also been teaching game design, capitalizing on this experience. Every semester I typically have at least one student who has severe VIMS reactions to first person game experience and I need to find accommodations. Last year, I wrote Verse code to allow one student to build a sidescroller in UEFN:
https://www.fortnite.com/@profmoto/4284-5093-0933
(rough and quick assignment in a first year elective)
Considering I have one student per semester that typically has this reaction, I had planned to build a template for future students and to clean up the rough code that made this level work. This student was able to complete their assignment, understand and demonstrate the learning outcomes without suffering another session of VIMS.
With this excitement, I’ve completed a new island build with the new Fixed Angle Camera and Third Person Control devices. I am currently reaching out to past students and friends that are known to have VIMS reactions to first person shooters for testing. I’ll post the island code here for discussion when the island is publicly released as a beta prototype.