Week 12 — Nov 10 — Ex 8: Point of View

Exercise: Ex 8 — Point of View. One scene framed three different ways with a virtual camera, plus a VR comfort variant.

Track note: the VR comfort work is mandatory for the VR track, and the syllabus locks the VR build target as of this week — any VR-track student still undecided on Quest 2 vs Cosmos Elite needs to commit today.

Lecture topics, expanded

Cinemachine 2D/3D virtual cameras and confiners. A Cinemachine Virtual Camera separates "what the camera looks at" from "how it gets there" — students set a follow target and damping once, instead of hand-writing a camera-follow script per project. A Confiner (2D or 3D) keeps the camera from ever showing outside the level bounds, which matters the moment a level isn't a perfectly rectangular room.

Framing and composition. The same scene shot three ways — tight follow, pulled-back with lookahead, fixed/locked-off — reads as three different games emotionally before a single mechanic changes. This is the design half of the exercise: students should be able to say which framing suits their game's pace, not just demonstrate that all three technically work.

XR rig setup and VR comfort (Quest 2 / Cosmos Elite). For the VR track: a comfort variant means addressing vection (camera movement not matched by the player's real motion) through vignetting, snap-turn instead of smooth-turn, or a stationary/teleport-based rig — the standard techniques for reducing simulator sickness. This is checked out through the lab, so scheduling headset time matters as much as the lecture content.

Connecting it forward

There's no milestone this week, but camera work is the last purely technical topic before the semester turns to balance and testing — and it's the one most likely to get skipped by students focused on their core mechanic. A game with a great mechanic and a camera that's still the default Main Camera parented to the player will read as noticeably less finished at the Game Build milestone in three weeks, worth a direct reminder given how easy Cinemachine setup actually is relative to its visible payoff.