[U29] - ForFinders

Inspiration

We were inspired by how little we knew about London despite living here for years. We've been to all the major museums, explores all the most famous castles, and read about famous figures who called this city home. However, we still felt a big gap between what we understood in concept versus what we experienced when we went to historical places in person. We wanted to be able to see London in a new, hands on way that allowed us to immerse ourselves in its past.

We wanted it to be functional both out and about, both while we adventured in London, so we could interact with historical sites in real time, and at home, so we could casually explore from the comfort of our homes.

What it does

ForFinders allows users to explore London's rich history from the comfort of a headset. With both indoor and outdoor functionality, it's made for both introverts and extroverts to play! The indoor functionality turns the mundane objects in your house -- doors, windows, plugs -- into portals that will transport you into the past. Starting in AR, when you walk through a magic doorway or pull a magic plug, a VR world will slowly encompass your headset and launch you into a scene from the past which you can explore. The outdoor functionality puts these portals on historical sites and objects, encouraging you to walk up to them in real time, with the AR and VR functionality working in much the same way. When you're done with your VR scene, you can exit through another portal and be brought back to AR.

How we built it

We built for ForFinders in Unity 2022.3.42f1. We incorporated the Interaction SDK and the Mixed Reality Utility Kit. For our custom made assets, we used Maya 2024.

Challenges we ran into

Since we were stuck inside for this hackathon, we weren't able to build spatial anchors outdoors. As such, we had to stick our doorways in random hallways in the PwC office. Our portals work! However, we would've liked to test locking them to real world locations.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What makes our project most unique is its ability to transition from full VR to AR passthrough. This functionality has not yet been released by Meta and does not yet have public documentation so we were honored to be able to test it out and delighted when it worked! We are also proud of our ability to utilize both AR and VR completely -- we have full AR functionality and full VR functionality.

What we learned

We learned how to utilize the Interaction SDK to the fullest, as well as how to transition from VR scenes to AR passthrough.

What's next for ForFinders

In our current build, ForFinders has the ability to function both indoors and outdoors. However, our current build isn't fixed to any real-world outdoor landmarks because we were limited to the PwC office and could not develop in the real world. In future iterations, we want to build a map with spatial anchors that directly correlates to real world landmarks. This give people new ways to engage with the past in a hands-on way, while also providing the context of a physical location.

Additionally, we want to make this a multiplayer experience, both in indoor and outdoor versions. We would use the Spatial Presence SDK for this. In the indoor version, people could share the experience remotely -- each located from their own home. In the outdoor version, people could travel to historical locations together and experience ForFinders simultaneously.