Critical Practice and Exploration

Building the Virtual Scene in Unreal Engine

Our immersive experience, 1666: The Burning City, leverages Unreal Engine to bring the recreation of 17th-century London and modern-day scenes together into a compelling VR journey. This section highlights the workflow and development progress of building the virtual environments inside Unreal Engine.

The project starts with a carefully designed start screen, featuring an intuitive interface including a start button and controller mapping guide. This helps first-time users quickly understand navigation within the VR experience.

Next, the team worked extensively on the modern London 180° video section, shot on location to provide historical context alongside contemporary visuals. The video is seamlessly integrated into the Unreal Engine environment, allowing users to transition smoothly from present day to the immersive past.

The core of the experience lies in the virtual recreation of Pudding Lane, the historic site where the Great Fire began. This virtual environment is meticulously crafted from detailed 3D models, textures, and atmospheric lighting to evoke the gritty, crowded streets of 1666 London. The development involves:

• Layout and Geometry: Using blocking volumes and mesh placements, the narrow streets and buildings are modeled with historical accuracy.
• Texturing and Materials: Realistic wood, stone, and plaster textures add authenticity and depth to the scene.
• Lighting and Atmosphere: Dynamic lighting simulates time of day and fire glow, transitioning between the calm “before fire” and chaotic “during fire” scenarios.
• Interactive Pathways: Navigation paths guide the user through the scene, carefully balancing freedom with narrative flow.

The experience culminates with a final 180° video sequence showing the consequences of the great fire, providing a powerful and reflective end to the journey.

Throughout development, the Unreal Editor interface (as shown in the images) displays our progress — from initial scene layouts and blocking to final lighting and interactive elements. We carefully optimize performance while maintaining visual fidelity to ensure a smooth and immersive VR experience.

This layered approach, combining stereoscopic 180° video and fully interactive VR environments, offers users a unique cross-platform storytelling experience, blending education and immersion to bring history vividly to life.

The Video is available on YouTube

Those images captures our shooting days on location in London, where we spent nearly a month capturing footage along the carefully planned path map. Using our custom-built VR 180° camera rig paired with an ambisonic microphone, we recorded immersive visuals and spatial audio to bring the project to life. Throughout the shoot, we closely followed our detailed event list, ensuring every moment was captured according to the narrative and production plan.

These images serve as key visual references for designing the virtual scenes in 1666: The Burning City. They capture the atmosphere, architecture, and dramatic intensity of the Great Fire of London, inspiring the look and feel of our immersive experience. From towering infernos and burning structures to detailed period interiors and streetscapes, these references help guide our digital environment creation to ensure historical accuracy combined with cinematic impact.

This collection showcases the development journey of our custom VR 180° camera rig, designed specifically for 1666: The Burning City. Starting with detailed 3D modeling in Rhino, the rig went through multiple iterations and 3D printing trials at the LCC print lab. The initial version was found to be too large and fragile, leading to a refined second version with a sturdier and more compact frame.

The rig features two 360° cameras mounted side-by-side to capture stereoscopic 180° footage, essential for creating an immersive VR experience. To complement the visuals, we used an ambisonic recorder to capture spatial ambient sound, adding another layer of realism.

For testing and previewing the footage, we employed Google Cardboard VR glasses, allowing us to experience the content as end users would. This iterative design and testing process highlights the technical dedication behind capturing authentic and immersive views of both historic and modern London.

These screenshots offer a behind-the-scenes look at the post-production process for 1666: The Burning City.

The first image shows the editing timeline for the stereo 180° video footage, highlighting the careful arrangement of multiple clips to create an immersive visual experience.

The second image showcases the ambisonic sound editing setup, where spatial audio elements are meticulously mixed to enhance the VR experience, allowing viewers to hear sounds from all directions just as they would in real life. Together, these technical details demonstrate the project’s commitment to blending cutting-edge video and audio techniques to transport users back to the Great Fire of London in a truly immersive way.

This screenshot showcases the color grading process for 1666: The Burning City within DaVinci Resolve. The image displays the timeline alongside the color grading panel, where custom curves and waveform scopes help fine-tune the visual tone and balance of the footage. This step is crucial for enhancing the immersive experience, ensuring the visuals authentically convey the mood and atmosphere of both historical and modern London scenes in stunning detail.

This image highlights a Fusion compositing technique used in 1666: The Burning City to create a multilayer plane setup. By layering elements in 3D space, this method fakes depth of field and adds a realistic sense of dimensionality to the scenes. It’s a clever visual trick that enhances immersion by simulating natural focus shifts and depth, enriching the overall VR storytelling experience.

This screenshot reveals the Fusion workflow used to transform raw 360° footage into an optimized 180° video. The process begins by splitting the original 360° footage in half, isolating the 180° field of view needed for the project. Then, the video is warped onto a half-sphere and carefully corrected for lens distortion to ensure a natural and immersive visual experience. This precise editing step is key to delivering high-quality VR content that faithfully represents the environment while maintaining viewer comfort.

Here is the output video – available on youtube.

(https://youtu.be/PNzdm6x04LA)

Here are some user research questions about the Great Fire of London: 1666:

This post breaks down the Great Fire of London: 1666 into a detailed event list that serves as both a storyboard and shooting plan. It’s the blueprint for bringing this immersive experience to life, outlining key scenes, moments, and visual cues that guide the production process. Whether you’re curious about how the project is crafted or interested in the storytelling behind the fire, this breakdown offers a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes.

Description for the Script Page:

1666: The Burning City is more than just a story — it’s an immersive, cross-platform journey that bridges modern-day London with the historic Great Fire of 1666. This in-production experience uses cutting-edge stereo 180° video to offer a unique perspective, allowing users to explore and compare London’s present-day streets with how they appeared during the catastrophic fire. Through VR, participants can step directly into the heart of the chaos, witnessing the fire’s devastating impact firsthand. The script here lays the foundation for this innovative narrative, blending historical education with immersive technology to create a powerful, engaging experience unlike any other.