RemembVR

Playlist Door
Memory Hall

Inspiration

We were inspired by deep dives into our own playlists, where we recognized different clusters of each playlist as corresponding to significant periods of our lives. The songs evoked specific memories, in image and feeling, and we wanted to embody that in Virtual Reality. Additionally, we were inspired by Black Egg’s Social Galaxy, an interactive exhibit built in 2016 that allowed users to walk through a tunnel decorated with their own social media presence. Given the theme of treating health issues and mental illnesses, we wanted to provide a stress-free environment for those undergoing dementia, Alzheimer's, and other memory-loss illnesses. Numerous studies have demonstrated the significant positive impact that exposure to either familiar music or nostalgic photos has on the quality of life of those suffering from dementia and other memory-affecting diseases. Through the connection between music and photos, our app hopefully allows every user to remember just a little bit more about their past.

What it does

RemembVR is an immersive virtual reality experience, walking people through the visual and auditory landscapes of their lives. The project taps into users’ Spotify and Google Photos accounts, building montages based on correlations between songs added and pictures/videos taken, and compiles them in distinct rooms following the ‘timeline’ of the playlist itself.

How we built it

RemembVR is built through Unity and all of our assets were created through Maya. Music blends and volume adjustments were done through Ableton.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest problems were linking up the Spotify and Google Photos APIs. We were able to find a way to control music playback for Spotify through a Unity asset, but it didn't allow us to play music through Unity, which was what we needed. Additionally, we also needed to connect the Google Photos API to draw upon images and videos from different picture albums, but did not end up having enough time to fully implement the feature. We also challenged ourselves to create an environment that is welcoming without being emotion-specific, cluttered, or cold, in order to direct as much attention as possible to the music and images without distraction.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are especially proud of creating a clean and relatively bug-free experience to demonstrate the "walk down memory lane." We spent a lot of time on polishing the environment and included cool features such as photo/video selection in each room, door animations, and lighting effects.

What we learned

Advanced light baking with various different light sources
Image and video projection in a 3D space
Audio crossfade through C# scripting

What's next for RemembVR

Fully integrating SpotifyAPI and GooglePhotosAPI
Dynamically generating photo and video placement on room walls
An experience finale that ties together all the rooms
More interactability with photos and objects
Using ML/AI to analyze each room's photos and generating a "themed" room with relevant ambiences