Guardians of the Galaxy

Inspiration

From a young age, each of us has stared into the night sky and wondered if we would ever be able to break the bonds of gravity, and one days live among the stars. Unfortunately, the world simply cannot grant us this request. We decided we did not want to wait for tomorrow's technology to bring us to the stars, and instead use today's technology to bring the stars to us.

How it works

This project uses the Oculus Rift VR and the Leap Motion Controller to build an immersive world that allows users to travel across our Solar System. The user is first placed in what seems like a jail cell, and makes his or her first step by breaking themselves out, and gazing out into the vastness of space. We used a particle creator to give the user an authentic feel to the night sky by dispersing stars, and we used spherical objects that have textured to look like the planets in our solar system. The user can then move across the galaxy by simply walking like they normally would, and should they want to move quicker (since space is pretty big), the user can engage a warp but dragging their hands in opposite directions across the screen, or giving keyboard input.

Challenges I ran into

This project has been difficult since its inception, and has given many of us the biggest challenge we have ever faced. Immediately, the Oculus VR is a complicated piece of equipment, and requires a very specific set up so as to function, much less function properly. Once the Oculus VR had finally begun working, the rest of the software needed to be implemented, and run in the Unity engine. We also had to decide how we were going to incorporate the use of hands. We had the choice of using either the Myo armband, or the Leap Motion detector. While the Myo would offer something more accurate, the Leap Motion would be easier to configure, and a faster way to test the system. We ultimately chose to use Leap Motion, which meant that our warp command would be more difficult to implement. At the end of our project, this choice we made ended up being a problem, as the Leap Motion could not accurately detect the hands of users so as to allow them to warp. This means we had to implement a brand new way of using the warp function, which had to be a keyboard input. This is unfortunately not what we had hoped to build, as were hoping that this would be independent of the keyboard, and free of constrictions.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We were extremely proud that we were able to use the Oculus Rift. We had never used the technology, and had no idea how we were going to build this immersive world. Even if the simulation doesn't run today, or tomorrow, the build was impressive, and we were able to build a lot of simulations that contained the beauty of space that we all wanted to see.

What I learned

We learned that it can extremely difficult to build an immersive world, and have it run on any computer. We realized that even if every program could technically run, the hardware could slow us down at the very end. None of us had enough memory to give our simulation the proper start it needed, and we had to quickly use the Alienware machine at the end. We also learned that the amount of work that we agreed to would be much larger than anticipated, and that we would have to make sacrifices in terms of our sleep schedule and our well being so as to finish our project. While we didn't get the project running like we wanted to, the sum of what we have is more than enough to serve as a testament to our perseverance and determination.

What's next for Guardians of the Galaxy

The next step for this group of misfits is to take the set up, and hopefully improve some of the programming so that the simulation can run on any computer, regardless of power or space. This may take a long time, but we are committed to building something that anyone can use, so as long as they have the tools and the drive to explore a world that we created. We hope that our project can reach more than just the five of us, and build into something that people across the globe can use so as to the stars inside the comfort of their homes.