It’s week 2, and I feel like we’re already in full swing. Sharan has been working with cross platform networking. We’ve been able to connect the daydream to the PC as well as to tablets and iPads. We tried working with Gear VRs as well, but that proved to be too annoying to network with the Daydream. We’ve only tested connecting two devices together at most, so we have a long way to go. Our goal is to get 17 devices all within the same space.
Nicky and Nayeon have been working on creating avatars for the players in the virtual space. We boiled down our concepts to four which Nayeon created concept art for:
Nicky then modeled these in Maya with small animations to show what it would look like if they moved their hands. We’re hoping to narrow down our selection to one through play testing and create customization for the avatar. We were told the students would love to customize their own character!
Rajeev has been stress testing the Daydream to figure out how big and detailed of an experience we can make. He implemented 20 of our avatars into a unity scene and tried to add more and more things until the Daydream’s performance decreased. Rajeev says that at 75k triangles, the scene starts to get laggy. We’ll figure out how to create an interesting experience with this constraint!
We also got the chance to visit the Cornell School. I think it went way better than any of us expected. The teachers we met and the IT director seemed really passionate about teaching and quite receptive to our project. These teachers view learning like a whole lot more than just studying facts. I wish I had people like them when I was growing up. We were able to solidify our concept of Biomes along with getting some great pointers for how to develop better experiences for the middle schoolers.
A nice photo of our team and the staff of the Cornell School (even though Nayeon and my eyes are closed and Rajeev had to be in class)
Until next time.