VR Public Speaking Prep

Scene

Inspiration

Kevin and Matthew, attending the hackathon at first as a pair, met Justin and Marissa during lunch. The four decided to come together and make a team, and build a life changing application. Many ideas were brain stormed, some written down, some thrown away. There were so many possibilities! They decided to target a large problem emerging in today's society, especially the young people-public speaking.

What it does

The virtual reality application utilizes the power of the Oculus Rift to give a unique experience than any other screen. It gives the user the feeling of standing before a crowd at a podium to deliver a speech. This is to simulate a real life situation. The user is given a customizable script, that he/she will read. The speech recognition software verifies that all the words spoken are correct and accurate. The Myo even furthers the realistic feel. It shows a pair of hands that can be used to rehearse hand gestures, or identify negative hand tendencies. All these core technologies come together into one to deliver a powerful, efficient solution to nervous rehearsals in front of the bathroom mirror.

How we built it

The application was build with one idea in mind-make the experience as real as possible. Kevin worked on the main scene of the application. All the people, the podium, the building, and the microphone were designed and implemented by him. Matthew worked on the Microsoft Speech API, to ensure that there was a fully functional speech recognition software. Justin worked on the Myo, to make sure that the hand gestures were accurate and precise. Marissa worked on the website, to make a efficient site that was also beautiful. After each part was completed, they were brought together as one, and VR Public Speaking Prep was born.

Challenges we ran into

Some challenges that were encountered were the issues with making the Microsoft Speech API work well with the Unity scene, having the Oculus Rift work on Windows 10, due to Oculus' non-support of Windows 10, and making the accurate hand gestures for the Myo.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The team is proud of their hard work and dedication on this project. They worked well together, even going to other similar groups to lend help, and had fun while working on the entire project. They were doing something they enjoyed.

What we learned

What was learned was that teamwork, hard work, and dedication can go very far. Also, Oculus Rift does not do well with Windows 10.

What's next for VR Public Speaking Prep

The team is looking to improve upon the design, and clean up a lot of the possible errors.

Built With

Submitted to

Los Altos Hacks

Created by

I worked on the Microsoft Speech Recognition API in C#, and getting the Oculus Rift to work with other hardware. What I learned was that teamwork and dedication will help you achieve any goal, and that anything is possible. I made new friends during this life changing experience.

Matthew Pham
I worked on getting the unity scenes set up. I worked on modeling and building the virtual reality setting. I also cleaned up the speech recognition application, and integrated the Myo and the speech recognition into one. Through this hackathon, i have learned the value of meeting new people and working with them. At every hackathon i've been to, i always stayed with a pre-planned group. This time, we teamed up with others, and met up with many others which made the event all the more exciting. I Also learned that using new hardware can be very tricky, but it can be very rewarding if you get it working. Finally, i learned how to code in c# and use unity

Kevin Palani
Linked the myo to Unity 3D and the Oculus Rift, calibrated movement for player, a lot of trial and error until accomplishment. This is my second hackathon and I met a number of great people all extremely knowledgeable in a variety of computer languages, programs, and hardware.

lee-justin
I supported the team by bringing drinks and food. I made sure everybody was well nourished so that they could type faster and have fantastic ideas. Luckily, my groupmates were nice enough to teach me more about coding, for it was my first time. :)

itskoo