Inspiration

Recently, there's been an explosion in a new way to create, share, and preserve memories. It is called Virtual Reality (VR) and it's time is now. Here are some startling numbers:

The virtual reality market could be worth $30 billion by 2020
500 million VR headsets could be sold by 2025
171 million people could be using VR hardware and software worldwide by 2018
Google's Cardboard app has been downloaded up to 10 million times
One million people have used Samsung's Gear VR over the past month (May 2016)
Nearly 1.3 million people subscribe to the YouTube 360 channel
Over one million hours of video have been watched on Gear VR
28 million people could be paying for VR hardware and content by 2018

Meanwhile, on the Creators side, an influx of affordable VR cameras are hitting the market. This past year, major brands like Samsung and LG are offering production ready 4k capable cameras at prices ranging from $199 - $499. VR is no longer for the early adopters and hobbyists.

What it does

VR Tag Room360 is a free and easy way to create, store, and share 360 VR images and videos. With smart 3D objects tagging, anyone can add details to the virtual environment for a more immersive interface. For realtors and Airbnb hosts, 360 Tour offers a scroll navigation built right into the scene for the ultimate headset experience. By using open source technology, we are able to greatly lower the barriers of adoption to allow anyone with a VR camera to be creators and owners of their content. The application runs on the browser and therefore widely available on mobile and desktop devices instantly. Users with mobile devices are able to activate headset mode and experience true VR with devices like Google Cardboard / Daydream, Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Playstation VR.

How I built it

Images are uploaded to AWS with Javascript and PHP. Then an open source framework Aframe was used to render the VR images. More hacking was done to navigate through multiple VR images and add 3D tagging. The VR camera used for this project is the Samsung Gear 360.

Challenges I ran into

VR developer tool and file sizes require a lot of computing power to work with. A lot of debugging went into maximizing the codes. Another big challenge is dealing with 3D objects. It was tough to keep track of all the x,y,z coordinates.