“We are building a social AR experience for the future!”
Trailer video
Social Interactions
AR Experience
Multi-Player Game
Next-AR is a Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center Silicon Valley (CMU ETC-SV) student project that is creating a multi-player social augmented reality(AR) experience for players who are not necessarily in the same physical space.
Since AR technology has been widely used in many fields mostly as a single-player experience in recent years, our team decided to explore more especially in whether the technology can be used to establish social connections and enhance relationships between players. We use various gesture interactions combining with shared virtual space forms to achieve an intuitive and innovative social AR experience.
Learn more through our Final presentation
Production Timeline
Week 1
Getting to know us
- Kick-off meeting with Carl and Melanie
- First faculty meeting, we make our goal clear: Create a multi-player AR experience for two players who are not necessarily in the same physical space. We are suggested to brainstorm more and do tons of prototypes. After that, we can decide on the most fun and engaging one then dive into it!
- We tried several existing projects and started brainstorming
Week 2
Research on existing projects
- We tried three demos of Pupil and tried Ako(Some parts didn’t work, but we got the experience).
- Jamie worked on the branding design and here are several sketches she made(Attached).
- We continued research on articles and papers related to social interactions.
Week 3
Social interactions
- Brainstorming on the interactions/mechanism
- Metrics & Matrix renew
- Branding refine
- Network connection demo
- Leap Motion gesture works
Week 4
Quarter
- Finished composition box.
- Prepared playable demo and project short presentation for Quarters.
- Collected feedback from EA employees and ETC faculty.
- Dug more with our idea, designed interactions that allow players to cooperate and ways to foster communication.
- Solved the technical networking problem between devices.
Week5
Find a direction
- Talked about the topic ”Why AR” again – Ideation: use physical furniture or props to let players feel that other players in the AR world can interact with their physical worlds.
- 3 directions of our experience:
1) Small games pack
2) Survival experience
3) Several isolated demos like Pupil - Technical demo 1: two players in the AR world can clap and high five together.
- Technical demo 2: two players in the AR world can pick up objects and throw or give to each other.
- Voice chat feature on the network is partially working right now. The server can now talk to the client.
Week6
Balance board idea
- Decided on the new prototypes we are going to build.
(We want to test some functions & ideas we can use later by these prototypes - Ideation about emotional expression in the AR world and emotion system in our project.
- Decided on the art style, made some art assets for prototypes.
- Talked about what we are going to show on Halves.
- Build prototypes!!
Week7
Prepare for Halves
- Prepare for Halve presentation
- The Balance board demo works!
- Make all three demos good for Halve playtest
- Talked about physical object direction again, and come up with the magic box idea
Week8
Halve Presentation
Behind the camera! We spent a lot of time to practice every day and tried to polish our slides! Good job Team!
Week9
Complete Experience Flow
- Discussed the whole experience flow
- Write down all the mini-game ideas we brainstormed
- Tried to implement magic box idea
- Worked on the desktop observation feature
Week10
More Details
- Decided on the mini-game ideas/ More details
- New experience flow
- Improved magic box
- PC mode
- Start building basic functions for the construction idea
Week11
Narrow Down the Scope
- Keep working on the magic box feature
- Working on all 3D models
- Finish the draft version of physical campfire
- Narrow down our scope
Week12
Playtest & Improve
- Created two sets of physical probs: magic box and campfire
- Finished all the 3D models we need
- Collected feedback from ETC Remote Playtest day
- Created our script for soft-opening video
- Implemented new features and iterated our experience
Week13
Soft Opening
- Polished our experience: VFX, SFX, emotions, eating animation
- Soft opening playtest video
- Gathered feedback from soft opening and discussed our next plan
Week14
After Soft
- Improvements based on soft opening feedback:
- Added gloves to give a safety warning feedback
- Adjusted stone generate method
- Added talking animation
- Prepare for the final presentation
Week15
Prepare for Final Presentation
- We still polished our experience a little
- Prepare for Final Presentation
Week16
Meet our team
Advisors & Clients
Carl Rosendahl
Melanie Lam