TIMMINS 1912 MINING EXPERIENCE

The Timmins 1912 Mining Experience will put you in the shoes of a local miner and their daily routine. Perseverance, discovery, and opportunity experienced by different groups of people across the region is what helped shape this community. The land challenged us while giving us the means for survival and the opportunity to create a home. 

In October 2019 I was approached by my friend Ran Sieradzki to pitch a VR experience to Timmins Museum in Ontario, Canada. Timmins has a unique situation where they run a museum that showcases their communities history as well as their mining, however you cannot visit the mines, as they are dangerous and still in use today. They wanted to be able to show visitors what it was like to visit the mines, without actually being in the mines. Cue Virtual Reality…

I put together a pitch and concept vr demo in 48 hours to present at our kick-off meeting. Timmins loved the demo so much, that someone asked if they could use it how it is. This kicked off 40 days of development. In those 40 days, I was the sole developer creating the VR experience in Unreal Engine as well as utilizing Substance and Megascans. Ran Sieradzki created the miner characters using Oculus Medium and Maya.

The experience had a few main goals; transport the user back to 1912 and show them a day in the life of a miner, going into the mines, using tools, and learning facts about how work was done. Through the experience, the user picks up tools and uses them to progress to the next section of the mines, while doing so they learn facts about the mines along the way. This will become a permanent exhibit at the Timmins Museum.

Developer Play-test Video

Interaction with Blueprints

Screenshots