PoppinNow

Inspiration:

A particular slide during the presentation yesterday, that showed how in the future, lines between AR, VR, and RR (Reality Reality) would be blurred, and it'd just be OR (one reality).

What it does:

Well What its supposed to do, before realising the limitations of SparkAR, was to view trending instagram/twitter posts, and topics near you, in AR.

How we built it:

Our initial approach was to layer either the twitter api, or instagram api as our provider of social media content, with a geo-location api like google maps api. So while tracking the user location, and using that data to filter what social media content is most relevant, we'd utilise the SparkAR Networking module, and the ExternalTextures module to dynamically create textures that'll be rendered on materials of a particle system, emphasising the incredibly fast rate at which people share their data via social media. So as the user moved, the social media posts that "pop" up in their augmented reality space, will change.

But what we do have now, is a hilariously mimicked version of what the intended functionality was supposed to be. Using SparkAR, we mimic the social media api service by using screenshots of tweets as textures.

Challenges we ran into:

As stated, the limitations of the SparkAR in terms of using external textures, and making api requests using the Networking module. When we finally definitively concluded that SparkAR wasn't "the way" (do you know the way...) other options such as ViroMedia AR with react native, was just not feasible in the time remaining.

Accomplishments that we're proud of:

Neither one of us knew of SparkAR until yesterday (well I did), but neither one of us have even visited the website. Despite going through our own little HBO "Silicon Valley" moment, like team member Hany Rostom would say, "When you struggle, you learn."

What we learned

SparkAR's documentation on deprecated modules isn't that good, but most importantly the technology of the future (AR, VR, ML, AI) is still very young; but the larger the community gets.... yeah that's all we've got, have a good evening.

What's next for PoppinNow

It will be fully redeveloped, but this time, using another AR platform like Viro, and in React-Native.

Built With

• sparkar