Star Link

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  Student using AR to view the actual starry night

Inspiration

Many people describe seeing a real night sky as "breathtaking", "humbling", and "An experience everybody should have at least once.”

This is something most of us here have never actually experienced.

How many of you have actually tried to stargaze?

Have you been able to see the stars clearly?

Frankly, no. 80 percent of people can't see the Milky Way, according to National Geographic. We are not just losing the stars to light pollution but also the connection to the world around us.

What it does

Star Link is an immersive AR experience that acts as a localized "awe hotspot" on campus.

Look up or lay back and point your phone at the sky.

The darkness slowly fills with stars and constellations.

Ambient sound creates a calm, immersive experience.

We bring back what was taken away.

How we built it

We developed the AR experience using Scenery and Apple's ARKit ecosystem.

The core environment relies on a massive, high-resolution .usdz Skydome.

We relied heavily on an event-driven timeline to pace the emotional experience.

Starry skies fade in slowly where ambient sounds are triggered, providing an immersive experience. We use the wait function to add voice lines in intervals.

Challenges we ran into

Conceptually, our biggest challenge was a late-stage pivot. We initially built the app as an educational tool about light pollution, but we realized that reading facts on a screen killed the emotional impact.

We had to completely scrap our UI and analytical features to focus entirely on the psychology of "Awe" and human connection.

Technically, we faced significant technical hurdles with 3D rendering and depth calculations. Early on, our imported Skydomes were suffering from Backface Culling, rendering the stars on the outside of the sphere while leaving the inside invisible to the user.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of being able to create an immersive AR that addresses an social issues while having an impact on real students and bringing back the beautiful view of starry night.

Built With

• scenery