Manhole VR

Jayesh Pillai | Abhishek Verma | Banda Shiva Teja | Uttham Prakash | Ananda Bathena

View From Manhole

Synopsis: “Compelled by the exigencies of poor economic life and caste identity, Amitabh, a young law graduate, becomes a manual scavenger. One day, to earn some extra money to support his family, he decides to get inside a large unsafe sewer to clear a blockage. He neither has protective gear, nor the accompanying engineer to check for poisonous gases. Will Amitabh come out safely?”


Official Website :
Animation Film - Trailer :
Animation Film - IMDb Page :

This project is part of a larger narrative by the manhole collective. The collective attempts to create experiences that communicate the difficulties manual scavengers face in India and spread awareness about this topic.

Introduction

In the evolving landscape of film and storytelling, Virtual Reality (VR) is emerging as a transformative medium. Unlike traditional films constrained by a static frame, VR offers a 360-degree canvas that allows audiences to explore stories from multiple perspectives and move within the environment. This shift from passive observation to active participation poses both thrilling opportunities and intricate challenges for narrative creators. Among the vanguard projects exploring this new frontier is “Manhole VR,” a pioneering work that merges the boundaries between film and interactive gaming.
A Deep Dive into “Manhole VR”
“Manhole VR” is not just a film; it’s an immersive experience designed to captivate and engage through its innovative use of VR technology. Directed by Jayesh Pillai and Abhishek Varma, with technical direction by Banda Shiva Teja and Uttham Prakash, and sound design by Ananda Bathena, this project ventures into the harsh realities faced by manual scavengers in India, blending compelling storytelling with real-time VR immersion.

Explainer video - Remote collaboration in AR - Teacher + multiple students interaction


Research Directions

While there is a huge body of work on collaboration and remote communication in mixed and virtual reality, their design ideas and findings may not be directly applicable to mobile AR, due to its lower level of immersion, and the affordances of the technology itself. From our initial tests, we have identified the following directions to focus on, in order to establish guidelines for creating better mobile social AR experiences.

  • Social Presence: This refers to the extent to which a user feels that another person is actually ‘present’ in a shared virtual space. Higher social presence is important for the participants to establish a rapport and communicate effectively. We plan to compare the level of social presence in mobile AR and other mediums of communication.

  • Representation: The characteristics of the avatar used in a virtual space also influence the possible interactions in that space. The challenge in the case of mobile AR is that the only information available to gauge a user’s pose is the handheld device’s position and orientation, as opposed to their head’s position & orientation when using Head Mounted Displays (which might also have individual controllers for each hand). We explore an avatar space that compares avatars that vary both in visual and behavioural fidelity to understand how they affect perception and presence.

ScholAR School
Proposed avatar space
  • Interaction techniques: Having a shared virtual space in mobile AR brings up new challenges in handling interactions. For example, identifying metaphors for disabling audio and video, personal chat, among breakout rooms among others.

  • Applications to Education: The goal of recreating a classroom through AR is central to this project, so we will be investigating the efficacy of this medium in comparison to the status quo of group video calls, and attempt to identify topics and scenarios best suited for such an AR platform.

Publications

  • Murugan A., Vanukuru R., and Pillai J.S. (2021). Towards Avatars for Remote Communication using Mobile Augmented Reality, in: IEEEVR 2021 (In press)