ReadyXR

Who we are
Gameplay
Gameplay

Inspiration

In a world full of unexpected disasters and situations, we often forget the vital in-the-moment decisions that can save our lives. How can we simulate these sometimes costly and boring training programs? Introducing "Ready XR": Your Emergency Training Protocol experience. Designed for individuals from diverse backgrounds, we offer those with limited exposure to natural disasters in new areas, our app offers immersive XR simulations to learn and practice emergency preparedness in a fun yet fast-paced way. With interactive guides tailored to various scenarios, users gain invaluable experience and confidence in handling emergencies effectively and quickly.

One of our team members, Sea Won, who is from Korea shared her story about her time there and in the States. She mentioned the lack of preparation for earthquakes in Korea due to the rarity of the natural disaster. This resulted in people in Korea being unable to respond properly when an actual earthquake recently occurred, reflecting the lack of education on emergency protocols in schools. Learning from this experience, Sea Won realized the importance of comprehensive emergency training, especially in regions with infrequent disasters. This inspired her and our team to develop accessible and memorable protocols to ensure readiness for any unforeseen event, regardless of experience or geographical location.

Arriving in Boston for the MIT Reality Hackathon, we pondered how many attendees from different backgrounds possessed knowledge of emergency protocols relevant to their regions. This inspired us to develop a universal protocol easily learnable anywhere, leveraging XR technology for immersive, game-based training that ensures quick comprehension and retention.

What it does

ReadyXR is a mixed reality experience to learn and practice emergency preparedness guides and tips with a gamified approach. With the power of immersive technology, it enables users to be exposed to dangerous situations. By detecting the action of the player, real-time feedback would correct you to lead to the correct action in certain situations.

How we built it

With mixed reality in mind, we built the game around the Meta Quest 3. We used the game engine Unreal Engine 5.3.2 to build the application. With blueprints and C++, we developed the obstacle interactions. Our Design process consisted of research, ideation, low-fidelity sketching, High-fidelity prototyping, testing, and iteration. For finalizing the UI/UX for the game using Figma, and building 3D objects through Blender.

Challenges we ran into

We had to discuss and think thoroughly about the gameplay direction and design as a team. How could we teach important themes and concepts, while still keeping fun and mimicking real-life intense and fast scenarios? We had to devise clever ideas and designs around this obstacle of our own.

Another point of contention was whether we wanted to develop this project for mixed reality, or virtual reality. Seeing other similar applications like Beat Saber virtual reality seemed like the obvious direction, but we decided on mixed reality for better learning outcomes.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We managed to create a working game that mimics our original idea of learning these quick survival decisions in a quick and gamified approach. The obstacle designs and interactions we came up with were well thought out and refined. We are very proud of the final product we were able to produce with the limited time we have.

What we learned

Developing mixed reality applications through Unreal Engine
How to design an interactive game with people from diverse backgrounds

What's next for ReadyXR

ReadyXR hopes to continue preparing people from around the world for a variety of disaster situations in a fun and immersive way. We hope to incorporate more mixed reality features that take aspects and objects from users' real-life rooms like tables and valuables instead of pre-designed objects. In the future, we aim to expand to include more emergencies like fires, lockdowns, storms, extreme heat, and human encounters.