Inspiration
When I first saw the theme, I though instead of creating a game, I strived to develop a useful and fun app that utilizes new technologies instead of a platformer. Many organizations and people create time capsules to remind themselves of past events, a lighthearted memorandum to their past. The only problem with these is that the capsules are expensive, it takes a tedious amount of time to dig a hole for them, and in some cases it's hard to track where they are easily. I decided to take the guesswork and hardships out of time capsules by created ARCapsule, an innovative way of leaving messages for others and for personal use.
What it does
ARCapsule allows the user to place and view time capsules around their space in Augmented Reality. These capsules can be looked back into and left in space for a later time. A statistics tab shows how many capsules have been placed and the capsule creation tab allows users to add photos, notes, and specify users that will be able to see the capsule.
How we built it
Apple's libraries are very flexible and can be used in a multitude of applications. I programmed this in the Xcode IDE with Swift and used many apple libraries. For the augmented reality, I utilized RealityKit and ARKit. To allow compatibility with the user's photos, I used PhotosUI. For the UI I used UIKit and in total I used SwiftUI.
Challenges we ran into
There were many challenges in this app. For example, getting the behavior of the AR capsules down was a feat in of itself and took multiple hours just to get the base of the app ready, almost half of the first day. From there UI was smooth sailing except for some issues with deprecated methods and a few UI issues.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I am very proud of my ARKit and RealityKit integration into this app. I think it's really innovative and unique compared to many other projects. It takes a different approach to the theme of the hackathon and executes it well. Although this app may not be as flashy or beautiful as many other apps, considering I did this in only 1 day and a half I am very proud of my accomplishments.
What we learned
I learned how to implement ARKit and RealityKit into an iOS application and I learned how to transfer data between pages.
What's next for ARCapsule
I have a strong feeling that this is a really innovative app that has lots of potential. In the future, especially during summer, I'll polish this app and prepare to launch it on the App Store as my first App. This will be a massive accomplishment for me and I believe if I execute and polish it well, it can create a community as well as a large userbase.
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