V-Games

Say goodbye to boring solo flights, and hello to your fellow flight-mates, with a game or two to break the ice, some chats, and maybe a new friend too! V-Games is your ticket to your best flight yet!

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As an international group consisting of two Italians, one Brit and one German, we all came by plane to participate in HackUPC and so the challenge from Vueling came at just the right time. Sitting on a short or long haul flight where everyone left to their own devices (pun-intended ;)) and has to entertain themselves for the entire time is something we have all experienced, and we would rather avoid the boredom in the future. Especially coming from a generation who grew up with local multiplayer games and Pictochat powered by a variety of consoles, we have always worked better together than apart, and with that in mind, we saw this challenge as the perfect opportunity to better and personalise our in-flight experience for future Hackathons abroad: we created v-games.

What it does

v-games is a hub system that works completely offline via a localhost server. In the hub, you can play multiplayer games (including quizzes) with and against other passengers, watch movies and listen to music together. Our core feature, which we believe really brings the passengers together is the ability to connect via our chat system with fellow flight-mates, where tourists can seek recommendations from locals, learn more about the culture, and make friends, turning what is usually a very individual experience into one which is rich and shared.

How we built it

thought about game-ifying the in-flight experience - a lot of brainstorming here and throughout the entire process a quiz? a messaging section? games? landing page - took inspiration from video streaming services (Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.) webpages for each category running on a local server offline ensured all the pages are mobile-friendly to improve UX

Challenges we ran into

Creating a functioning offline server was extremely challenging - like climbing Mount Everest - at times for us. It is easy to depend on an online server, but working with Bluetooth - which we considered - or other P2P technologies proved difficult. However, we overcame this by creating a local host instead with sockets. Ensuring the files we used were memory-efficient to upload on GitHub (e.g. there was a limit on files of 25mb). Communicating clearly with each other in spite of our different languages, cultures, perspectives and backgrounds (some more tech-focused, others more business/marketing-focused) and using these differences to create a unique product.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Producing a complete product, which is interactive and can be used on in-flight screens and mobile/digital devices with different aspect ratios. Adding a large number of games (alongside the music and movie players, and chat feature) to keep passengers entertained: Around the World Quiz Memory Cards Snake Word Scramble Pong TicTacToe 2048 (Lydia) Personally, I’m most proud of the landing page interface, which I programmed with lots of support from Harsimran. I haven’t actively used HTML/CSS and JavaScript in years - in fact, I first coded that page in Python - and I had never combined them until now, so it was great so see both the technologies and the programming language in action together.

What we learned

That it’s important to build a solid foundation before springing into tons of other ideas (as detailed below); and securing the functionality of a few key areas is essential to this. For example, after getting one game up and running, adding more became much more simple.

What's next for V-Games

Further updates to synchronize games with lights on board to make games more like a 4D cinema experience. Increasing business development themes to collaborate with games franchises like DnD and developing v-games originals to up-sale them as board games directly on the plane. We want to develop the first place on earth to play 4D boardgames. Expanding the categories and options to choose from within each category Including a leaderboard for each game at the end of each flight, with potential for Vueling flight-related prizes (e.g. £10 voucher to spend on next flight) Integrating the chat functionality into other categories (e.g. commentary on movies by passengers, so they can connect and discuss their opinions on a film or album) Creating more accessibility-focused functions (e.g. those who have little to no use of their fingers can still interact with v-games with motion-controlled arm bands; those with colour-blindness could tweak the colour palette output, etc.) Using speech-to-text technologies to generate song lyrics for the passengers Revolutionising the in-flight experience and encouraging more interconnectedness both on and out of the plane

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