Inspiration
We showed up to the hackathon with little to no ideas about what to make or do. However after seeing the google cardboard and the ease of use with unity, we felt we'd be able to make something fairly substantial. We then decided on a VR file viewer as an interesting way of searching through and looking at files. The ideas developed form there throughout the hackathon to the finished product.
What it does
Our project, VR file viewer, currently takes a folder full of images and populates a virtual world with interactive frames with these images on them. The world is easily traversable using the magnetic switch on the Google Cardboard and the head tracking of the phone. The hack also currently includes a method of playing music through this file viewer, and can easily be shown to switch between files when run on a PC, repopulating the world with images for each folder.
How we built it
Using Unity, the C# programming language and much caffeine, eventually a working product made its way onto a phone. We split the work between the two of us by one creating the main world and user interactions, and the other working on algorithms and working out how Unity handled files which were to be implemented in the final product.
Challenges we ran into
Unity is a little awkward at times, and the Google Cardboards were prone to being difficult to put together and stay together, as well as the apps made through unity heating the phone to a large extent and causing memory leaks. These were only small hurdles though.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Getting a full finished product together in time even with a small team of two. We are also very proud of the positive responses we got whenever other participants tried our product.
What we learned
How to code better in C# as well as dealing with file systems etc. from within other environments such as unity. We also learned that flexible plans are the most likely to succeed.
What's next for VRFileViewer
Cloud support, iOS implementation, more filetypes supported, multi user environments so others can see what you're looking at- possibilities are endless.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.