Individual reflections - Roksana

     During the course I learnt a lot about technologies like: Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Cross Reality (XR). VR is my favorite one since it offers a unique level of immersion. I appreciate how putting on a VR headset instantly transports you to a new environment, where you can do whatever you want. 

    We made two projects in VR - for Third and Fourth Assignment. The other two was made in AR. Below I will talk about the details of each of the assignments.


    Assignment 1: 

    For the first assignment we had to make AR (Marker-Based) application. The goal of our project was to create a map-based learning application using Vuforia. Vuforia is a software development kit for creating AR applications.

    We have developed an application that displays a map pinpointing the location of any country's flag photographed by a mobile device's camera. The purpose why we decided to develop this kind of application is that it may be used to educate children and others in an interactive manner.

    For now, the application only works for European countries due to lack of time. For sure, this feature can be expanded in the future.

    The biggest problem we encountered during this project was that the app wouldn't run on our phones because of incompatibility with the Unity setup. Another issue was that the Image Target component didn't recognize all the flags due to image contrast.

    My main responsibilities during Assignment 1:

- Make maps with highlighted countries (images)

- Make Image Targets for each country


    Assignment 2:

    For the send assignment we had to implement educational AR Markerless application. We made an application with the museum. We decided to show the chronological progress of what warriors wore, from ancient times to modern days. We used the AR Foundation and ARCore packages to set up the build for Android. We created an ARSession and ARSession Origin objects. For plane detection, we used an AR Plane Manager object. The 3D detection feature of the application worked poorly on our Android phones. Planes were detected incorrectly, and sometimes a plane was floating around the screen or stuck to the edge of the screen when turning the camera.  The second problem was that the museum's assets did not work with shaders. The last issue was that, when players enter the portal and go through it, they cannot see the museum once they are past that plane.

As we encountered so many problems, we decided to work mostly together on this assignment.

    My main responsibilities during Assignment 2:

- Find assets

- Implement motion tracking


    Assignment 3:

    This assignment was my favorite one, as I really liked the idea of the project and the final results. For this assignment we had to implement the app in Virtual Reality. We decided to make a restaurant's game where the player can get the score for delivering the food to the clients. In this assignment we didn't face any big issues. 

    For clients and food, we implemented spawners, so they can appear in random places in the restaurant/kitchen. To grab the food and deliver it to the customer we had to use XR Grab Interactable. However, we faced some issues with this component because the player went up while grabbing the object. To fix this issue we implemented script with two methods - Grab and Drop. The purpose of them, was to turn on and turn off the trigger depends on the action.

    For orders, we also implemented spawner, so random customer can order random food. If the customer orders "Burger", the player can only give him this meal, otherwise the customer will not accept it.

    My main responsibilities during Assignment 3:

- Find assets

- Scoreboard

- Implement the functionality for picking up the objects


    Assignment 4:

    For this assignment we could choose if we want to make an VR or XR project. We chose to develop VR app, as we really enjoyed working on the VR app for the Assignment 3. We decided to make a game where the user tries to escape from the destroyed city with the monster. In order to do that, user has to use some gestures - in this way it is easier for the user to find the correct way as he gets hints by doing it. To make the game more interesting, we also decided to include some "mini games" - for example: user has to put batteries into the flashlight in order to increase the visibility. We also added some sound effects to make the scary atmosphere in the game.

My main responsibilities during Assignment 4:

- Find assets

- Animation for the enemy

- Make the enemy to follow the player

- Pathfinding for the enemy

- Pathfinding for the player, meaning "make gesture to see the correct way"


Author: Roksana Dziadowicz

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