The Book of Distance is a room-scale interactive virtual reality experience that imagines new possibilities for personal storytelling.
In this deeply affecting and personal pilgrimage, audiences join director Randall Okita as he searches for his grandfather, Yonezo. The journey follows generations of Okitas as they migrated from 1930s Hiroshima, homesteaded in Canada, and were forced into a Japanese internment camp. This is a moving exploration though the emotional geography of immigration and family archives in an effort to understand what it means to leave home and what may have brought us here today.
Experience the narrative and explore interactions throughout.
Finish the whole story, make sure you engage and clear aboutall the interactions.
Visual
Users in general agreed that they owned control and agency in their virtual experience. A good level of engrossment and task involvement is observed, as well as good responsiveness to interaction, smooth navigation, and low latency, but the evaluators had a low level of control. Thus, the general level of involvement of this experience is also slightly low. The characteristics of the title, in which the user follows a personal story of the director Randall Okita to relive his family’s immigration, may have influenced an experience of decreased control.
The realism of the experience is perceived from regular to good by the evaluators. The mechanisms or the consistency between senses was rated as slightly low. This could be explained by the characteristics of the title, in which the personal story guided the evaluator in a way that was not confusing or disorienting.
Both visual and auditory elements of the title were evaluated from good to excellent, which is consistent with its cinematic presentation. Sensory engagement was rated relatively good. Nevertheless, the sense of motion was evaluated between regular and good. Visuals were rendered in a 2D style of Japanese woodcut printing, which may have reduced 3D perception.
Both displays and controls of the devices contributed to maintaining focus on the part of the user. Oculus Quest 2 and Rift models performed slightly better than other devices. The highest rated element of the title was visual quality. Further improvements in device hardware is needed to reduce awareness of displays and controls.
To summarize, on a scale of 1 to 7, the Book of Distance offers a relatively good sense of presence, rated at 5.71. Sensory involvement was rated at 6.07. The combination of these likely helped overcome distractions related to shortcomings of the device hardware. In contrast, the weakest elements of the title were realism and naturalness. The former can be explained by visual display quality and control mechanisms of the hardware; the latter may be related to the fact that the story was a personal narrative, to which evaluators may not have been able to easily relate.
There was very little reported linkage or appropriation of the virtual body. The evaluators assigned a value between -1 and -2 (disagree) to most of the indicators related to identification with the virtual body. This can be explained by the fact that Book of Distance is an application in which the user does not have an avatar, and only shows virtual hands to manipulate objects when the storyline is paused.
This title consists of cinematic storytelling, so visual and auditory elements are uniquely relevant to its analysis. The results show – again – that identification with a virtual body was not achieved. The last three indicators are closely related to the sense of touch, and all of them were simulated via visual stimuli, which may reduce the perception of a virtual body and its link to the evaluators.
To summarize, on a scale of 1 to 7, a sense of embodiment was not achieved. The main factor that could explain this is the absence of a virtual body or avatar for the user, and a greater focus on the storytelling rather than an interactive experience that involves the user as a character of the story.
The narrative in the Book of Distance is supported by the following story elements: Mise en scène, Backstory/Exposition, Physical Characteristics, Visual elements, and Auditory elements. The main distraction is, “a few clumsy interactions (difficulty in throwing the horseshoe, multiple attempts depressing the camera button), and a few unclear moments – on the boat, is waving required? at the train station, do I help find the family?”
This title included every type of visual element in its narrative. The immersive experience evoked a complex mixture of emotions such as joy, hope, peace, love, beauty, sadness, relaxation, fear, and anxiety. Attention capture and color were the most influential visual effects and supported the overall mood, particularly environmental effects like fog, mist, snow, and dust. Lighting effects that called upon theatrical lighting attracted attention. Changes to the color scheme affected emotional tone. For example, happy moments were conveyed with bright colors, and darker moments were conveyed with desaturated colors. The motion and animation of interactive objects are well designed to enhance the narrative.
Enhancement of Presence / Narrative
“It helped immerse myself into the story as I'm shifting between an observer and the ‘father’ himself.”
“The creators thought a lot about the visual design for the narrative and sense of presence, making deliberate choices to affect the user.”
“The visual elements all work together to enhance immersion in the story and environment.”
Emotional Response
“Sad, hopeless, mellow”
“Joy, hope, loss, remembrance”
“Beauty, wonder, sadness, fear, anxiety, regret, peacefulness”
Excitement, love, joy, sadness, helplessness, loneliness
Visual Phenomena
“Fog, mist”
“Fog, snow, and dust are occasionally used to set the tone of the scene.”
“Environmental effects are used to indicate weather and create specific atmospheres, e.g., fog and snow.”
Attention Capture
“The stage light will shift my attention to the objects in the light.”
“Light, spotlight”
“Theatrical lighting is used throughout to shift the user's attention to different elements of the narrative.”
“Scene placement and directional lighting was used to capture and direct attention.”
Mood Support
“Light shift, motion”
“Fog, moonlight, spotlights, sun, etc. are used throughout to alter the tone of a scene.”
“The overall look of the experience strongly supports the emotional and somber narrative.”
Lighting
“Light and color to depict emotion of the story.”
“Focused directional light as well as sun/moonlight are used to create specific sensations for the user”.
“The shades and tones of the experience also support the somber mood, while reinforcing the theatrical motif.”
Color
“When the soldier came to take the family away, the overall color shifted to red and then black and white.”
“From greys to represent difficult times to full colors representing peaceful/happy times, color is used throughout.”
“Colors are desaturated in certain points of the experience to represent different times and emotions.”
Textural
“The detail on some virtual characters vs. the smooth surfaces of others highlights importance and empathy.”
“Objects were very detailed, where the characters(particularly background characters) had very simple textures.”
Motion
“Objects are moved around as the narrator tells the story.”
“The motion used to represent the bombing of Hiroshima was deliberately slow to reflect what the main character was losing.”
“Character animation was very well considered to enhance the narrative. Interactive objects also had their own animations which made them feel responsive and special.”
Set Design and Layouts
“It has a theatrical feel.”
“Most of the title is represented through a theater set, which both plays into some of the mechanics used and gives a sense of telling of a story.”
“The sets were key to the telling of the story in a theatrical way, with many seamless transitions between different sets and layouts.”
Sound effects were used for elements related to scenes in the story. Examples included footsteps, the cracking of fire, or the acoustic landscape of a café.
Audio design played an important role in this experience to enhance the visual element of the narrative. The most significant sound effects were background sounds and voice sounds. They included a mix of non-diegetic and diegetic sounds, such as animals, weather, music, boat horns, and the narrator’s voice.
Enhancement of Presence / Narrative
“It was really seamless as the story goes along.”
“The audio is a strong component in the experience. The narrative is driven by the story that the narrator tells, and the supporting sounds match the tone at hand.”
“The audio helps to tie everything together for a richer sensory experience. The combination of the narration and the recorded dialogues with the father really helped demonstrate the family connection.”
Emotional Response
“Peace, calm, joy, sadness, fear, anxiety, anger”
“Melancholy, calmness, happiness and sadness”
Audio Phenomena
“Birds chirping”
“The boat's foghorn, birds calling, radios, wolves howling, typewriters, bomb exploding”
“Diegetic environmental sounds are used throughout to represent things like weather, animals, etc.”
Attention Capture
“When the family is working on the farm, the drop sound of the stone shifted my attention.”
“The wolves howling directs the user's attention to the holes in the wood that you can look through to see the wolves. The typewriters draw one's attention up to the rows of typists writing the letters to the family.”
“Spatial sounds were used to direct attention to certain locations as scenes changed in the experience.”
Mood Support
“Sound effects are used sparingly so they remain effective, sometimes to bring positive emotions, and sometimes for negative ones.
“The sound effects were never too salient and supported the mood more subconsciously, enhancing the existing narrative from the visual aspects.”
Background Sounds
“The Jazz music was playing when the family was eating at the table. It was really chill and relaxing.
“The music shifts based on the setting. It's not overpowering but helps drive the narrative forward.”
“There seemed to be a mix of diegetic and non-diegetic music which was always appropriate for the scenes, e.g., jazz music from the radio while the family ate.”
Voice Sounds
“The son's voice will always come in at the right moment as the narrative.”
“The narrator is telling the story of his family.”
“The narrator remains the authority on the subject at hand while also letting his emotional state show through at times, which helps affect the user.”
“Narration is used strongly throughout the experience to tell the main story.”
The narrative of Book of Distance is strongly focused on generating reactions in the user. It does not aim to be neutral nor to induce a specific reaction, but it does seek to generate something. Therefore, the fact that users reported goosebumps serves as indication of the impact that the experience manages to elicit in them.
None
As previously stated, Book of Distance seeks to generate something in the user. And the variety of affective reactions reported indicates that it does indeed achieve this. Ranging from the pleasant to the unpleasant, the experience engages the user with its narrative from a very personal perspective.
"As the story takes me through the journey of the father, it was as if I can feel what he felt at that time. When losing the land, when hearing the news from back home and when got grounded at a barred space."
"Since the characters are nonfictional, I felt sadness for their story"
"The narrative, accompanied by the visual and auditory elements, the interactions, etc, all lend a hand in bringing up the psychological responses."
"The narrative made it easy to empathise with the family and their experiences, invoking similar emotional responses."
It refers to readying a virtual object for interaction, without yet committing to taking that action. Book of Distance uses both input device controls and direct touch to selection actions, allowing a maximum of 2 items simultaneously selected (one by each controller).
Users report that they were able to complete their intended action accurately with a small number of repeated attempts and minor frustration.
It refers to taking that action, compromising to a selected action. For most interactable objects, either controller should be in close proximity to the object (either directly touching or near touching) or the grip or trigger button unpressed.
Users can manipulate objects position, rotate them and add effects. It can be done using the virtual tool displayed by the input device, monomanually by either hand.
The system delivers feedback by shaders, haptic pulses and diegetic and non-diegetic sounds and signs.
When options are not available the system doesn’t display error messages.
An overall qualitative synthesis suggests that the user experience generated by Book of Distance is consistent with its emotion-oriented narrative goal.
The app offers a menu of relatively limited interactions. Still, in the service of a multimodal narrative that generates high levels of presence and broad affective responses (both positive and negative), the user experience of Book of Distance is consistent with the stated design intent.
