Direction Guesser

🌐 Inspiration

People who spend time on the ocean know that navigational awareness is a real skill. We increasingly rely on Google Maps and other technology to aid our spatial abilities. Many people claim to have a terrible sense of direction without realizing that this skill can be trained. Because we can: link

🌐What it does

DirectionGuesser is a fun game inspired by GeoGuesser. Users must point at nearby topographical highlights, such as major landmarks or local hotspots like McDonald's or a friend's house. The game aligns the game's north with true north using a magnetic calibration mechanic via a mobile phone and a quest controller. Guided by our mascot Pecky, a cute pigeon, users aim to achieve a streak by correctly guessing directions to random locations. This game should only be played in Mixed Reality, as players will remember the directions in relation to their own familiar living room. Every memory is mapped onto another one, so this provides the training.

🌐 How we built it

We started with the mechanic to synchronize the North, and tested if the controller movement would be accurate enough. This turned out to be quite easy. The North reference can be stored based on the Scene Understanding information and player preferences. We then created a list of major landmarks and a way of calculating rhumb lines from coordinates. We made the game dynamic to user input by integrating ChatGPT with the prompt:

systemMessage.Content = "You will only reply with coordinates of the input. The input is a location or a place. only respond with the following format: latitude,longitude"_

We experimented with passthrough layers and occlusion meshes on top of scene anchors to create an interesting effect.

🌐 Challenges we ran into

Our main challenges were clearly communicating the game mechanics and player objectives. To address this, we introduced Pecky, a cute pigeon who instinctively knows how to find north. Pecky 🐦 has a character with narrative voice lines, provided by our team member Sky, to guide players. Additionally, we utilized spatial audio to enhance the guiding experience, making it easier for players to follow directions and understand the game.

🌐 Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of integrating the true north mechanic into the game. Achieving a functional geospatial game was a significant milestone. Additionally, we minimized user input by incorporating voice activation for fetching coordinates, eliminating the need for button presses. We also created an immersive scene featuring a globe, allowing users to shift between their living room and a VR-like Earth globe experience. We are also very proud that we produced this game in less than one week.

🌐 What we learned

We learned to use MRUK to spawn occlusion materials, enhancing the passthrough effect. We also gained skills in color correction and blending camera effects with rendering styles. Additionally, we learned how to use Wit.ai for dictation and improved our understanding of shooting bearings. We also learned the difference between Rhumblines or Great circles

🚀 What's next for DirectionGuesser

We aim to make this a popular, fast-paced, and social game similar to GeoGuesser. Our goals include enhancing feedback for correct guesses, improving the feeling of success, and enabling score sharing. We plan to emphasize social aspects, such as aiming at a friend's house and allowing them to respond with a shot or target direction, like the largest building in the world. We also want to focus on live streaming and TikTok videos.

Built With

• c#
• mruk
• openai
• passtrough
• voicesdk