Moment of Bliss

Inspiration

Because of COVID-19, we're experiencing not only a global health crisis but also extreme psychological stress. The isolation and loneliness from social distancing, loss of personal and physical spaces, and not being able to enjoy the outdoors, for which there's growing evidence that nature helps relieve stress, are all taking its toll on people, To help relieve some of this stress using virtual reality, Moment of Bliss was created.

What it does

Moment of Bliss is is a free VR therapy option for anyone who can use some respite from the stress of everyday life. While it's designed as a single player game, you can interact with other people virtually by leaving notes for the next person. It also offers a lot of open virtual space and ways to enjoy nature like birdwatching from the comfort of your room.

While the app was designed initially for veterans who may not have the means (e.g. transportation, nearby healthcare facility that offers it, money to pay for VR therapy) to take participate in virtual therapy for PTSD, the idea lends itself to a wider audience who fall under the umbrella of experiencing psychological stress. This app can also help people who cannot travel much or leave their space, have limited or no access to safe green spaces, are looking for free ways to destress, or want to feel connected with others while having a space they can call their own.

How we built it

Unity, C#, EchoAR

Challenges we ran into

I've learned that not all Unity projects translate nicely on webGL. I can build a standalone application and run it without issues, but when I built project in webGL and uploaded to simmer.io, the first scene works, but the main part of the project (lots of open natural space!) perhaps takes a long time to load because of its sheer size, so all I have is a still shot.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Made a landscape from scratch in 3d using Unity!

What I learned

A lot about Unity— start early. It took maybe 3x the amount of time to build the webGL product than it did to create a standalone app, and the standalone app took about 30 min to build. (Crazy, right?!)