Abstract

DREAM COME TRUE is an immersive VR experience that explores the concept of lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is being aware of, and in control of, yourself, while realizing that you are dreaming. It is essentially the intersection between original reality and virtual reality. The project is based on the author's personal perspective of three universal themes in dreams; it depicts an entire dream journey from the moment one closes their eyes to the moment they fall into their dream state. Each theme indicates a meaning or message in the real world, and in order to reach the final stage, which is tranquility, players will have to endure the stages that come before, which hopefully will translate into resolving their real life struggles. The objective of this experience is to help people become more in touch with their inner consciousness and hopefully, assist them in reaching clarity in the real world.

Research

Research has shown that dreaming is like overnight therapy, stating that "REM-sleep dreaming appears to take the pain out of difficult, even traumatic, emotional episodes experienced during the day, offering emotional resolution when you awake the next morning." People who lucid dream gain memories of what happened earlier in the dream, the ability to manipulate their environment, control their own actions. They may even help people conquer night terrors and even help others work through day-time problems. This is comparable to a fully immersive virtual reality inside of our heads, which makes VR the perfect tool to help translate these dreams into real life. However, this is not without further studies, which show a VR flying simulation could train people to fly in their dreams, as compared to other video consoles. The idea of building the dreamscapes is inspired by the data showing that VR flying simulation could train people to fly in their dreams. It lead me to wondering could building the a VR simulation of my dreamscape help me assist participants in reprocessing upsetting memories in a safer, calmer environment, ultimately opening my project up to something that acts as a device that taps into the inner consciousness of participants and enables them to reach clarity.

Technical Details