This article will present the birth of my VR project named Lucid dream that refer to my experience of dreaming to simulate the feeling of experience lucid dream in a virtual environment. Known that most stages of lucid dreaming involve REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep which occurs at a high frequency and the eyes begin to move rapidly, my VR project refers to this concept and aims to explore using Eye-tracking technology for steering navigation in the virtual environment, in order to simulate the feeling of using eyeballs to interact with the surrounding environment in dreams during the REM period. I did two studies to evaluate the user experience and compare the new navigation method using Eye-tracking technology and the old one of using Head gaze for steering, the results shows that using Eye gaze as a navigation method is viable in VR, it provided a sense more immersive to players, but it may causes more dizziness than using Head gaze to steering. In addition, another conclusion has also been preliminarily proved that using VR close to people's sleep time may make people's dreams correlate with VR content.
What is Lucid Dreaming?
A German psychologist Eeden (1913) proposed the concept of “lucid dreaming” in 1913, which can be defined as those whom are free to remember waking life, to think clearly and to act consciously upon reflection, and are even able to control the dream, all while experiencing a vivid dream world like the waking world (Green, 1968; LaBerge, 1985; Gackenbach & LaBerge, 1988). From this description about lucid dreaming, I can confirm that I am a typical lucid dreamer, since I able to control the progress of my dreams when I’m dreaming, and have some thinking in the dream; I believe this comes from the control of my consciousness.
What is Rapid Eye Movement (REM)?
One of the concepts that dream scientists have always associated with the occurrence of lucid dreams is Rapid Eye Movement (REM). According to LaBerge (1981), lucid dreaming usually (though perhaps not exclusively) occurs during REM sleep. This conclusion is supported by research carried out in several other laboratories (Dane, 1984; Fenwick et al., 1984; Hearne, 1978; Ogilvie, Hunt, Kushniruk, & Newman, 1983)
Figure 1 Progression of sleep cycles in a standard night of sleep. The areas marked in red indicate REM sleep stages, which is when lucid dreams occur. (Liu, 2016)
Development Environment
I developed this VR application in Unity3D game engine v2019.2.6f1 with the programming language C#. The SDKs (Software Development Kit) I used for create virtual environment are SteamVR sdk v1.13.10 and VR Toolkit v3.3.0, also Tobii XR SDK v1.0.0 and SRanipal v.1.1.0.1 was used for create the eye-tracking interaction features.
Scenario Design
Based on the idea of letting players experience my dream, I decided to design this VR experience based on one dream I had recorded in my dream diary. I had multiple dreams in this experience, in which I was constantly moving between different scenes and experiencing some strange but interesting things. This experience was amazing, so I decided to adapt it as the experimental scenario through which to conduct this VR project.
I was walking in a blizzard at night, and the howling wind was blocking my progress, as if I had returned to the night when I was in Canada. Standing in front of the apartment where I once lived, I saw the green aurora borealis jumping in the night sky. After entering the room, I opened the window and rescued two wet pigeons flying in from the cold outside; they may be looking for a safe environment on this snowstorm night. "Please come into the room, it will be warmer" I said to them. Afterwards, I seemed to fly. I flew to a forest. There was a sugar house in the forest. It reminded me of a German fairy tale that I read when I was a child —Hansel and Gretel. (At this stage, I thought that my subconscious impression of the book had influenced the development of my dreams, and perhaps because of the experience of reading the book, I have constructed the background of the book in my dreams.)
I walked into the house, and there were three women in the room, wearing witch suits. They smiled and greeted me, but my intuition told me that they were not friendly. Soon after, I saw two children in the room. In my dream, I thought that these witches would eat these children. (Perhaps this idea was influenced by the story of Hansel and Gretel), I decided to save these two children. So I found a broom, and I flew up, and then pulled the children in the room onto my broom. At this point, the witches were becoming angry, and they started chasing us. I rode the broom and rescued the two children, then I flew out of this house, and when I flew into the sky, I looked back, the witches looked at us furiously on the ground…
Usually, when people are dreaming, there are several situations that often happen, such as being chased by something in the dream, or falling suddenly whilst flying in a high place. I decided to draw on these most common situations to design the content of my project, the scenario was divided to five parts which I will implement into five scenes on based of this simple first person sketch below:
Sketch
"Lucid Dream"
Scene 1
I am walking in a freezing weather with snowstorm tearing at my face and strong winds roaring at my ears and trying to push me backwards. I cannot stop my step in such desolation but moving forward with hope. The beautiful green aurora in the sky calms my mind. I thought to myself, “How wonderful it will be if there appears a shelter house.”, and then I see a distant wooden house in the vagueness of heavy snow, and a small wooden house can be vaguely seen in the wind and snow in the distance.
The sound of the cold wind whistling in my ear, I’m struggling to advance in the wind and snow, and from time to time I’m blown back by the strong wind. I am eager to hide myself in the wooden house waiting for the end of this blizzard.
<Trigger> start to advance, or stop/ Interact with game object.
<TouchPad_Up> Speed up
<TouchPad_Down> Speed down
<TouchPad_Left> Choose HMD navigation method
<TouchPad_Right> Choose Eye-tracking navigation method
Scene 2
Inside the gloomy room, I see the snows flapping at the windows. I start to find a light to make the room bright. Fortunately, I found a bed lamp to light up my room. After turning on the light, the whole room gets warmer. Suddenly, a knock at window draws my attention.
Outside of the window, a wet pigeon stands at there. “Get into the warmer house” I told to the pigeon and bring it in. The feeling of loneliness is alleviated with the little pigeon accompanying at side.
Scene 3
Walking along the path of inner mind, I see the neuron-constructed route extending under my feet. At the end of route, a shining door exists attracting me to continue onward.
Scene 4
I get into a forest which often appears in my childhood fairy tale books. It is about the sunset time, with the smell of moisture, I walk along the road heading forward to the foggy deep forest.
Like the contents of children’s books buried in my deep memory, I found a gorgeous house inside the heart of forest. The house was made by many kinds of desserts: donuts, muffins, candy canes, chocolate cakes and various beautiful bonbons. “Wait! Why this scene seems so familiar? There must be some evil witches inside the house who attract the kids to their house by delicious sweets and catch the kids as their meal!”, “Wait, why I have such impression in my mind? Let me get in and have a look!” I tell to myself.
Scene 5
I get into the house where the witches appear as imagined. They warmly welcome me, but I feel fearful to their kindness. I look around the house and realize that there are two kids inside. There is also a stewing pot with unknown ingredients inside. Suddenly, I see a broom at the house corner, and an inner sound tells me that I need to save these kids. I think I will be able to fly with that broom and I quickly pick it up to ride on the broom. The witches get mad and want to surround and catch me. At this time, I get a feeling that I must have superpower and then I stare at the witches. Like a miracle, the stared witch vanishes immediately in front of me.
“The best way to overcome fear is to face it.” Because this mind does exit in people’s subconsciousness, and it can be concretized in people’s dream. I think it can be interpreted as my subconscious mind reminding me to face difficulties (in real world) during my lucid dreams time. Here I would like to encourage players to overcome the fears they want to avoid.
I ride on my broom and save a little boy to ride together with me in the middle of the room. The other witches are still trying to catch me and I wish I can ride faster. Unbelievably, the riding speed of broom boosts up and I save another kid in the garden from the pursuant witches. We fly together into the sky and look back to the exasperated witches on the ground.
（To be edited...)
Demo Video
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