Riplr

Inspiration

Stephen Wolfram. Having dedicated much of our high school lives to the pursuit of knowledge in science and mathematics, we were graced by the invention of Mathematica by Mr. Wolfram, making our journey significantly easier. We wanted to take the next step in making visualization of complex surfaces even easier by being able to visualize them in virtual reality.

What it does

Riplr is a web application that allows the user to easily visualize complex surfaces and structures in a virtual reality environment with an Oculus Rift. By typing in specific commands, users are able to plot surfaces and modify certain variables at will to the general shape and how it changes. Of course, it is also capable of plotting multiple surfaces at a time, making it easier for users to look at intersections compared to picturing them mentally or drawing on paper. Users are also able to live edit their plots in the VR environment, making it easier to alter their surfaces

How I built it

The team used a Javascript libraries to develop our own version of a plotting library. We wrote wrappers to make the application more user-friendly as it avoided large amounts of coding and focused instead on the visualization aspects. We also implemented a live-editing text environment to allow users to code what they want to see in the application. The text inputted would be parsed through our wrapper to deliver the surfaces.

Challenges I ran into

As a team with little background in virtual reality, it was a challenge for us to pick up the VR coding practices in javascript. However, with some research and studying, we were able to adapt quickly and develop our application. There were also minor challenges throughout the project involving working with the Javascript libraries, but we were ultimately able to work around them.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm proud of the fact that we were able to create a powerful surface-imaging application despite our lack of experience in the hardware and virtual reality fields.

What I learned

Learned about Javascript as I never used it before. Also learned about transitioning 3D to VR.

What's next for Riplr

The next step for Riplr would be to include more dynamic interaction with the plots and maybe plotting them in different coordinates. We will likely proceed from surfaces to things such as parametric equations and data plots to analyze statistical trends.

Built With

• javascript
• mathbox
• oculus