Inspiration
We've always wanted to experiment with AR technologies and we were given a chance to finally explore all these new technologies to build something unique, eye catching and impactful.
What it does
An AR multiplayer game where where the main objective is to kill a holographic boss with all your friends. The boss does damage to the players in periods and patterns while the players try their best to attack and survive for 90 seconds. You view the boss with your phone camera and fight in the real world.
How we built it
We spent a lot of our time experimenting with different AR APIs and frameworks such as AR.js, WebXR, Three.js, A-Frame, LocAR and many more. We had no prior experience with AR but we were keen to make something truly incredible.
Challenges we ran into
However, we ran into multiple problems. Firstly, the GPS location of objects placed using A-Frame was very inaccurate and the objects often disappeared to other parts of the world. We managed to solve this by researching many other more stable frameworks with built in methods for stability of objects in the AR environment. We decided upon WebXR reluctantly, since this was not supported on ios devices. We later ran into problems adding DOM elements onto the camera scene but we solved this by using an experimental API. Luckily, we found a workaround to allow the website to work on ios devices by downloading an app called "XRViewer". We also faced many painful bugs and errors using websockets with expressjs while creating the backend.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
After each challenge that we overcame together, we all learnt something valuable and motivated to do even better as a team until the very end. The fact that we were able to make a fully functioning AR app in 24 hours with no prior experience is already something we're all proud of.
What we learned
We learnt how to debug more efficiently, how to search for the right technologies to use and how to keep a flexible and open mind when solving problems in an unfamiliar environment.
What's next for Holo
We want to expand on the existing features such as replacing the player shapes for actual avatars, increased attacks and actions such as healing and defending etc. But we also can use this technology on AR glasses or VR headsets to increase the possibilities exponentially. We could use this technology to place floating objects in a virtual environment (e.g. icons, apps, images, videos, calling).
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