Gaze Groove

Inspiration

Our inspiration for Gaze Groove came from the universal joy of making music and the desire to make that experience accessible to everyone, regardless of skill level or resources. We envisioned a space where players could explore the thrill of performing in a band, practice their favorite instrument, or even play without owning one. By combining the power of VisionOS and Styly, we aimed to create an immersive, intuitive platform that blends rhythm gaming with real-world music practice. Our vision is to bridge the gap between virtual and physical musicianship, empowering users to build confidence by being able to practice anytime, connect with music in new ways, and inspire creativity through the magic of VR.

What it does

With Gaze Groove, you can practice performing with a band anytime, even if no one else is around! Gaze Groove offers an immersive space to explore and refine your musical skills, with a live type environment where you can cue other virtual musicians just like in a live jazz event. Best of all, every track in the game is an original composition, created by us for you—and your band!

How we built it

We used Styly within Unity and developed assets controlled by those scripts to build our product. We used animations and textures to beautify our meshes and tested all of it in Styly's spatial layer website in Vision Pro.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into many issues with collision detection and the way that Unity dealt with object and prefab references when we tried to copy the same prefabs into the scene multiple times, we also had issues with the visual scripting because we hadn't worked with that before, and the references to those scripts as well.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud that everyone who tried our prototype so far loved the experience of playing in a band, orchestrating others, and hearing their taps on the table transform into music. The physical integration of integrating your own instrument—or anything you have at your home, if you don't have an instrument— has made the experience more personal, creative, and enjoyable. We are also proud of how well we managed our time, allocating enough time for ideation, development, and prototyping while leaving space to enjoy making music ourselves. This gave us time to polish the animations and fine-tune the experience, ensuring that playing the bongos and following the notes felt seamless and satisfying.

What we learned

We learned about how to utilize the Styly spatial layer plugin for Unity! It was a bit challenging at first working with Apple Vision Pro because only one person in our group had experience with Vision Pro, but we caught on pretty quickly, and learned how to work with Unity's Visual Scripting Studio and how to create the scripting graphs to make our experience more immersive!

What's next for Gaze Groove

In experimental versions, we had virtual bongos that the user could move and play on, but we plan to add extra effects for the users customized to their instruments in the future. Soon, players will be able to select and play any instrument they want—or even step into the role of a DJ or become the singer of their band. We also envision adding functionality for players to bring actual people into their virtual band, allowing a group of two to feel like a full band of five. The future of Gaze Groove is all about enhancing collaboration, creativity, and connection through music.