Individual Reflection - Vatsal

 Contribution to the group :

AR Project :

• Letters from O - T 
• Joystick Controller script
  

VR Project :

• Escape room layout

• Design for escape room 

• Uv Flash light puzzle

Reflection

AR Project:

For the AR project, we had to choose a project that added value to the end user, so the team decided to go for the children's alphabet learning book, which was simple as we lacked no prior experience. Our lack of experience made us opt for a project to help us gradually prioritize unity and its workflows. Throughout the project-building period, YouTube tutorials helped a lot in learning. One of the first challenges was to figure out how to do the version control, as it was new and we needed Unity Premium to accommodate a four-member team. So we switched to GitHub and it made a lot easier as we were familiar with it. The decision to focus on children's educational books was to make learning interesting and interactive. By integrating Augmented Reality, we provided a visual and tangible way for kids to learn the alphabet. The use of image-based tracking with ArTrackedImageManager from Ar Foundation allowed us to track specific images that were predefined in ArSession rather than using markerless tracking. The joystick controller I implemented was for the whole project globally so each letter model could be intractable. The joystick made it a more interactive experience for kids to explore the models intuitively. Reflecting on the theoretical aspects, the use of image-based tracking and AR Technologies aligned well with the concept of interactive learning. However, there is always room for improvement, particularly in refining interactions and adding new features.

VR Project:

For the VR Project, we plan on building an Escape Room to provide an immersive, spooky, and haunted environment, where the end goal of the user is to solve puzzles inside the room to escape out of it. At this point, I was familiar with Unity and version control, which helped to tackle the project with better confidence. The first step was to design and build the whole escape room inside which the user would be, which I did completely with designing and layout both at the same time. Also, added lighting and shadows to make it more realistic when the user is inside the room and doesn't give gimmicky vibes. The use of Box colliders on the objects inside the escape room made it more user-interactive. I made a UV Flashlight puzzle, in which the user has to find the number hidden in the escape room through the flashlight and input the door keypad to escape the room. This puzzle was a bit tricky to make as the numbers that were to be made were hidden in the room and only to be seen when the UV light was cast on them. Our supervisor Kasper helped to figure out how to use shadows and lighting for this puzzle. The use of 6 DOF tracking in the Quest allowed the user to physically move and explore the space, which made it more realistic and immersive.

Conclusion

To sum up , this course taught me alot about XR in general and how it works. The major reason that made me more curious about taking up this course was Apple Vision Pro . I played games before but Apple Vision Pro was a whole perspective change for me about how i see XR in the coming years . I am satisfied with the projects i made and my contributions throughout the projects .