We are very proud of the amazing HOLOWORLDS on our HOLOFIT VR Fitness platform. All of our environments are completely original, designed by our small, in-house graphic team, and we are happy to see so many members of our community recognize the effort we put into creating them.
We wanted to share with you the story of how HOLOWORLDs are created, from the concept to the amazing new VR world.
1. Creating the HOLOWORLD concept
It all starts with a concept.
There is no one person that comes up with HOLOWORLD ideas in our team, we all bring them in, including you – HOLOFIT Member! At all times we have a list of at least 30 environment ideas for the future.
To decide on which to do next, we first listen to what our community is saying and then decide depending on how well the ideas fit into our vision for HOLOFIT.
Our community is large and diverse. We want to be able to cater to all needs: have the more realistic environments, have more of fantasy environments, include historical sites, include landmark destinations, make fun workouts, make serious workouts… and still keep our distinct style. That’s why we already have 13 HOLOWORLDs that can give you enough variety to choose from.
We have to give credit to our CTO for the Babylon idea: being a history and VR buff, he finally got to combine the two. And we all love the Babylon HOLOWORLD!
Babylon, the initial inspiration and the final product
When an idea is selected, it’s time to develop the concept in-depth, complete with a map of the workout track, various stages, the hidden trophies, entry points, any active gameplay mechanisms such as the turtles in Troglodyte, etc.
The paths on which the user moves are pre-defined because this helps you focus on the sports activity, and more importantly, it eliminates any possibility of motion sickness. However, to provide variety, we try to always include junctions with alternate paths.
These maps are made as detailed as possible, to enable developers to know precisely what is needed.
This is the concept map we’ve used for Tropical, Single and Multiplayer when we were designing this HOLOWORLD.
When you’ve finalized the concept, it’s time to start developing the intricacies of the HOLOWORLD.
2. Designing the 3D and other assets
Each HOLOWORLD on HOLOFIT is made up of 3D assets. Each animal that you see, each tree, each cloud that you see and just about anything else that you see is an original 3D asset that was designed by our in-house graphical team.
Our team meticulously crafts, optimizes and animates the 3D assets with the goal to provide high visual quality at the maximum framerate and screen resolution of the available headsets. This makes all of it run as smoothly as possible.
Meanwhile, expert sound artists specifically compose sound effects and music for each of the environments to ensure total immersion.
With all the assets designed, it’s time to put it all together and test.
3. Putting it all together and testing
Usually, each member of our team tests the full environment we’re working on.
When we do this, we look out for any visual bugs, any logic mistakes, the fitness aspect of the environment, the mechanics of gameplay if there is one, and much more.
At this stage, it’s not rare that we re-design aspects of an environment as we try to make them as perfect as possible before releasing it.
And then, when all is complete, it’s time to launch!
After all the effort, this is definitely one of the most exciting things we get to do. It’s very rewarding to see the first reactions of our members, as well as the constructive feedback that then helps us make the environment even better in the next release.
This whole process of developing HOLOWORLDS is very creative and extremely fun, especially when we get to share all of it with our community (if you haven’t yet, join us).
And how about you? Which HOLOWORLD do you like best?
Did you have a chance to try out our environments? We are waiting for you!
