Personal Reflections - Oliwer Szefer 293139

 

XRD Personal Reflections – Oliwer Szefer 293139, Group X4

Looking from a personal perspective, I would consider the XRD course to be inspiring and useful. As I already had some knowledge from the GMD it was easier to work with all the required tasks. All the projects that I have been working on with the other group members were divided according to the specific topic. For the first two it was possible to work remotely as those were used as the mobile apps, while the 3rd and 4th required a headset and more time to configure to make everything work correctly.

As the first project was specifically related to the augmented reality, the point was to be able to display and interact with the virtual object placed in the real world using a mobile device and its camera. The Vuforia SDK alongside Unity was used to make the make the ping pong that used a QR code to display a virtual wall for the player to be able to rebound the incoming ball.  It was necessary to include a trackable ground plane to be able to move it within the right area. To improve the overall experience of this project, I have also added the audio effects the way I have learned during the GMD course, meaning the serialize fields with the specific audio name and the function to be able to play it in the AudioManager file. Besides, I have also added and resized the invisible walls to prevent the ball from going out of the boundaries. Finally, I have made the UI, specifically the main menu to be able to play the game, change the options – volume and speed of the ball or to be able to quit. This project was a good way to get started with the AR in general because it was rather clear where everyone knew what to do. The only downside of using Vuforia was the fact that each one of the members needed to import and configure it locally. This project however was a good base for the further work that I was required to be doing.

The second project was a continuation of the AR with the use of the ARCore. This time, me and my group have decided to make a bowling game, where the board, the ball and the UI were made in Unity.  It was possible to include the ARCore plugin in the project, so that no further configuration was needed. With the use of the anchors it was possible to recognize the surroundings to be able to scan the surface where the bowling board should be displayed later. When I was testing the overall experience after the last update, I have found out that it also requires some screen interaction from the user – when the room is scanned, the surface is generated, it is necessary to hit the screen where it shows, so that the bowling board appears on top of that surface. This should give an impression that the object has been placed in the real world. Compared to Vuforia, it does not require any specific template nor QRcode. However, as it lacks some deeper explanations it also needs some more time to do the research.

Moving on to the third project, this one was focused specifically on Virtual Reality. This time the idea was the Goalkeeper minigame where the player is set to save as many balls as possible. The XRInteraction Toolkit played a major role while configuring the setup for this project as there are many guides telling how to use the in-built scripts, especially to provide the tracking of the pads using the XRRayInteractor, raycasting an object, in this case the ball that goes towards the keeper – the player. As my group spent most of the time together working in the lab configuring the project, the basic menu also had to be changed to the VR-adapted one placed on the scene, as it uses the VR scene with the VR camera that works from the headset. Moreover, the XRGrabInteractable component was used to be able to catch the ball when it was within the range of the player. The audio has been added to notify the player about the kick. Compared to the AR projects, this VR one required more time from us to implement the interactive features that require the use of a headset and constant testing to check if there were no major errors. After everything was tested with Oculus, I have also updated the cosmetics of the surroundings to make the experience even better. I have also added a skybox to make it look like it is taking place at night.

The last project was specifically based on the XR, where the point was to combine the virtual reality with the real world. To do that, my group started with the XRInteraction Toolkit configuration with the use of the OVRRigCamera and InputOVR responsible for the interaction with the virtual objects. This time, besides the controller support, the hand detection was also included as the target was to make a game with Passthrough with the use of hand tracking to interact while playing the mini games such as – pattern memory game, dart game or a card game. The scripts used originate from the Oculus Interaction SDK. The one that was used in each of the mini games is Grabbable and HandGrabInteractable because it allows to catch and carry the virtual object because it reacts to the actions from the hands which are detected by the headset’s camera. From the personal perspective, I spent most of the time working with the Dart Game where I used the inbuilt script – Physics Grabbable that allowed to throw the carried object into a following direction. As each of the games used passthrough our group together included a possibility to move the objects around to be able to place it at any place that the player wants.

Summing up, it was a great experience to learn about each technology during the XRD. The VR projects required a little more time to work with the use of the headset, however considering how much time there was for each project, the results are more satisfying for me. Everything has been achieved the way I imagined as team member – a pong game, bowling game (AR) and goalkeeper, minigames (VR and XR).

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