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ARena Logo
What it does
ARena is a shared AR experience built for stadiums and live venues. With AR glasses, spectators can see e-sports games brought into vivid reality, projected right over the existing field. Instead of watching on a screen, fans experience the match as if it’s happening live before them, sharing reactions and energy together. It combines the excitement of traditional sports with the creativity of modern gaming for a new kind of live event.
Inspiration
Watching e-sports in person doesn’t capture the same social energy as traditional sports. With the rapid growth of AR and VR technology and the rise of e-sports, we saw a chance to bring that missing sense of connection back. Our generation values real experiences and shared moments, and we wanted to create a way for e-sports fans to feel that same excitement together in person.
Meta’s recent advances in AR, like the Meta Display Glasses and Orion prototypes, inspired us to use their hardware to build our first prototype. As AR technology becomes as common as smartphones, we believe experiences like ARena will redefine how people watch, play, and connect.
How we built it
We used Meta’s latest AR tools to create a shared environment that feels natural and accurate. Our main innovation was an image tracking system that maps the virtual arena in 3D space relative to each user.
Instead of placing large, costly markers on the field, we used small markers at audience seats. The headset tracks these to anchor the arena for every viewer, keeping everything lined up perfectly. This method makes setup easy, affordable, and highly accurate, giving users a stable and immersive experience.
Challenges we ran into
Getting all users to see the same arena playing at the same time in the same place was tricky. Fine-tuning the tracking system and networking so multiple devices stayed synced took a lot of trial and error. On top of that, Meta’s development tools came with a steep learning curve and plenty of setup hurdles. But after a lot of testing and problem solving, we built a version that works smoothly and reliably in real time.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We’re proud of finding creative ways to combine familiar technology with emerging tools to create something new. Despite a tough development process, we adapted quickly and learned how to make complex AR systems work together. Building a working prototype in such a new environment was a real achievement for our team.
What we learned
We learned that AR development is still a challenging space. Current tools are not very developer friendly, and even AI support has limited knowledge of how to work with them. It showed us how much room there is for growth in this field and how early we are in its evolution.
What's next for ARena
We have plenty of ideas for the future. Imagine concerts where artists can perform across the entire country in one day, or AI commentators bringing live personality to every match. We’re also exploring the possibility of capturing live 3D footage of real sporting events and streaming them anywhere in the world through AR. The possibilities are endless, and ARena is just the start.
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