Industry & Tech Students & Alumni
FIEA Funhouse: Innovating the Future of VR Interaction
June 19, 2025
The Challenge: Redefining the VR Experience
FIEA Technical Art Instructor and Subject Matter Expert (SME) Chris Roda presented Kelley’s team with challenges that were centered around manipulating the user’s perception of space and reality. He challenged the team to explore redirected walking, which involved creating an experience where a user feels as if they are moving in a much larger space than they are actually in, and without physically walking far. Roda also wanted to see how the team could change the way users perceived virtual objects while enabling them to interact with them physically.
“The topics covered in this experiment will be resolved within the next decade or two,” Roda said. “It is my hope I can introduce FIEAns to the challenges they inevitable will need to face and give them a competitive head start to the solutions and implementations.”
There were four main challenges:
- The Hellevator – Could the team build a VR elevator that makes users feel as though they’re traveling up and down, even though the elevator itself stays in place?
- Suspension Bridge – Could a VR suspension bridge trick the user into thinking they are walking on a dangerous, swaying bridge while gripping a real-world physical railing?
- Interactor Area – Could users interact with a Motion Capture (MOCAP) actor in VR, where the virtual character looks completely different from their real-world counterpart?
- VR Maze – Can a VR maze be created within a fraction of the physical space?
The Solutions
“We designed a multi area horror attraction that uses redirected walking, live tracked props, and haptic feedback to sell scale and immersion without exceeding our studio size,” Kelley described. The user wears noise-cancelling headphones, a VR headset, and a vibrating rumble vest, so that their sights, sounds and some sensations are driven by the game. Set up in FIEA’s MOCAP stage, the user had a limited space to explore the multi-floor maze in this spooky VR experience.
I was hoping the team could pull off at least one of the experiments. Instead, they pulled off solutions for all four.
Kelley’s team presented the FIEA Funhouse project as one of eighth prototypes in GameLab, a spring semester course led by FIEA Director of Strategic Partnerships Erik Sand. In this course, students explore using games in non-traditional applications. This year, FIEA Funhouse was the last of eight projects presented by teams made up of FIEA’s Cohort 21 students.
“I was hoping the team could pull off at least one of the experiments,” Roda said. “Instead, they pulled off solutions for all four. I feel they went above and beyond my initial expectations for the project.” The integration of sensory interactions and real-time feedback became central to the design.
The team built the Hellevator, a descending elevator platform that restricts forward/backward motion. They custom-scripted the descent and synchronized it with audio cues to build suspense. They also integrated a haptic vest that the user wears, which was synced to elevator vibrations, enhancing realism and unease.
For the suspension bridge challenge, the team wanted users to feel both physically grounded while simultaneously challenged by the virtual swaying of the bridge. The user actually walks in a crescent shape, a clever use of redirected walking, physical sensations, and VR illusion.
The team solved the third challenge by suiting up an actor in a MOCAP suit who was presented as a terrifying clown in game who could interact with the user through jump scares in real time.
And then there was the challenge of redirected walking in a VR maze. Kelley’s team adjusted player movement speed using subtle directional gain, doubling or halving perceived distances traveled. They were able to expand the playable area within the limited MOCAP studio space without breaking immersion.
“VR development and technology is still in its infancy,” Roda said. “However, as commercial acceptance continues to develop, consumer demand will push technology.”
While the technical hurdles were substantial, the greatest challenge for the team was managing time. The students were pulled in many directions between their capstone projects and specializations, so finding the time to fully explore these state-of-the-art problems was tough.
Collaborating to Solve Problems
One of the highlights of creating FIEA Funhouse was the team’s opportunity to work with Meta (formerly Oculus), which Kelley said provided technical support throughout the development process. Kelley said that his team had the opportunity to meet with VR tool developers from both Unity and Unreal Engine 5, receiving guidance on how to implement cutting-edge features like redirected walking.
Kelley’s team also credited their SME, Roda, for the honest support: “Chris Roda was a blast to work with. He gave us space to experiment, but always stepped in with razor-sharp feedback when we needed direction. His experience and instincts helped shape the chaos into something that actually worked. He’s got that rare ability to be both chill and brutally honest—definitely a major reason the project came together as well as it did.”
On the other hand, Roda was most impressed by the students’ relentless spirit, often experimenting with alternative methods until something clicked: “They were dauntless and continued to attempt new solutions once they encountered barriers,” Roda said. “Up until the very end, they were continuously inventing new solutions. I was very proud of them!”
The Future of FIEA Funhouse
Now that FIEA Funhouse has completed its initial GameLab phase, the team has shifted its focus. Kelley shared that several team members are exploring ways to get the project published, possibly in science or technology journals. There’s also interest in seeing if the next cohort will expand upon the concept groundwork in the next year of Erik Sand’s GameLab course.
“The project was built to sprint, not necessarily to persist, so adapting it for long-term support—or even just making it playable outside the mocap studio—takes work,” Kelley explained. “At the very least, it’s been a great proof-of-concept for fast-paced, interactive VR design under tight constraints.”
The teamwork, skills and challenges that the project provided was exactly what Kelley was looking for. “FIEA Funhouse was kind of a microcosm of why I came to FIEA in the first place: collaboration, chaos, creativity, and no safety net. It was messy and ridiculous and somehow still worked. And that’s probably the best kind of game dev education you can get.”
Learn more about the FIEA Funhouse VR experience on Kelley’s website.
