Inspiration
Virtual reality is an incredible new technology and we were interested in how it could be applied to old classics, and the difficulties involved in doing so. We also wanted to explore the potential to use physical hardware to enhance the virtual reality experience.
What it does
Uses a Windows Mixed Reality Headset to create a virtual representation of a physical set of Rock Band Drums. The drum-pads are connected to the computer via Arduino, allowing it to register hits and play like normal Rock Band.
How we built it
We used Stereo kit, which is an open source Virtual Reality Library to be the basis of the project. As for the physical drums we used an Arduino connected to 4 piezo vibration sensors to act as our controller input, which communicated with the computer via serial. We wrote a script in Python to turn original Rock Band drum tracks into a JSON file format that we used to represent the notes within the songs.
Challenges we ran into
We initially wanted to use QR codes to locate the drums due to having issues with our controllers but had difficulty getting the headset to read the QR codes. We eventually got the controllers to work and re-wrote our drum-pad location code to use them. The other difficulties came from hardware compatibility issues due to the headset being an early model that didn't work smoothly with the latest software.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
What we learned
What's next for VR Rock Band
Our original plan was to use a Microsoft HoloLens to overlay the game-area over the physical drums, so that would be our next step. We also have discovered that making DIY Rock Band controllers to replace OEM ones no longer in production is a viable option. We would also like to explore using Bluetooth communication to remove the need for connecting the Arduino to the computer.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.