Hey everyone! It is 5 am but I’m running on a lot of coffee so I don’t care.

Welcome to my final project post. I will explain everything that I have done in my presentation and video about what I wanted my “theme” for the future to be.

Concept
I originally explored the grand possibility of the VR and AR market (and eventually when they both merge). Recently this year, there has been so much VR development news that it has sparked new hope for the community. With the release of the Experimental Chinese Quadcom VR headset, we are beginning to see a real cool future ahead of us.

The Project’s Elements
To show this, I put together two pieces :
The interactive piece, in which you use a color tracker to detect a blob of a specific color. Originally, I wanted to detect my hand, but with blob detection this is actually impossible. Even with color tracker, there is unfortunately…the same skin tone throughout the entire body. So, I tried my best to represent a “holographic” and I did so with specific color. The color tracker works best in the best lighting area that has high contrast for certain colors. LEDS work the best in all environments, but I did not have a giant bright LED to work with. So, I used my bright yellow Pikachu instead.

In the video, I bring my pikachu to each corner of the screen. This plays the corresponding video and enlarges it for the viewer to see.
Originally, I intended to put a makey makey to show different price points, but I realized this is really irrelevant because VR (and AR) does get cheaper as time and technology progresses. I also got rid of the makey makey in general, because color tracking might ruin triggers. So instead, I have trigger buttons set to A (AR Scene), V (VR Scene), and Spacebar to go back to the main menu.

The second piece of the project is the animation itself. They are all relatively simple and are easy loops (except for the last two scenes). We have four corners for each video output. It goes as follows.

Top Left – Represents the Present Time.
VR scene is simply a standard, normal VR experience in Beat Saber (there is no sound because I’m really tired). Note the headset is wired.
AR scene is using the AR tech on current smartphones.. and Pokémon Go.

Top Right – Represents 5 Years in the Future
VR scene now includes the VR treadmill, which is bound to become cheaper and much more home affordable for the public. We also see the headset is wireless to represent the potential of 5G wireless networks for upcoming tech, and Link has no controllers. I wanted to represent the machine having really advanced hand tracking, which is becoming more and more relevant in the industry. Link is shooting things in Boneworks as you see.
AR scene features really cool AR glasses that project holographic screens that you can also touch! Link is surely having fun.

Bottom Left – 10 Years in the Future
There is only one scene, but oh boy is it really important.
The industry is planning to eventually merge VR and AR. I chose to represent this with smart glasses, that can immerse the user into a VR/AR world with complete sound changes. This alters the user’s vision and hearing; a very relevant goal to merged reality. Taking of the glasses immediately shows you can hope back in the real world anytime.

Bottom Right – 15 Years in the Future
Believe it or not, we actually have brain technology to detect signals and convert them into data. What better way to show this future than using probably a lot of VR fans want, a Full Dive representation into the virtual world with the user bringing all their senses in the virtual world. New Link in a virtual new world with all his fictional gear! This is a reference to the anime Sword Art Online (minus dying in real life).

All these videos will be set once and color tracking will be disabled until Spacebar is pushed again. That was intended, but the Max programming is so sensitive to color that it can trigger incorrectly. I know there is no labels, but I wanted to show a nearly finished product. (Especially the animations).

Most of the models in the animations are free 3D models (really anything that doesn’t look simplistic was not made by me. The only models I made were the VR treadmill, controllers, trackers, and base stations . There also isn’t many textures since the models are free so they nearly all lacked textures. You can texture them, but it would be really hard since the model is just all in one object and not in parts…

My Max Patch Below

Here is the video of the Project in action, as well as all my animated videos.

That’s all everyone! Thanks for reading my crazy late night post! Documentation below in case you want to see how this was all made.