Week 2 contained research in regards to the HoloLens and the case study precedents.
There are a handful great projects that I’ve researched in the area of the HoloLens, in the past week or so. These projects show great potential in the future developments of apps and even allow the users to learn and develop additional skills as shown in the case studies below.
The first case study was the Holo Measure, which App is one of few basic projects that have been created for the HoloLens, with the developers finally having the access to the developer’s kit. This project has been selected due to the fact that it’s mainly useful and not for just entertainment purposes. What the app essentially does is gather spatial mapping data from your environment and obtain measurements in various types. To activate the ability to measure objects, the user needs to air tap points which the HoloLens will produce the exact distance, area, volume, and height.
The next case study was with Volvo, and this project uses the HoloLens to visualise and simulate ideas and cars into a virtual and augmented world to design. With the use of the HoloLens and computers, the company has used its function to simulate everything from crash tests to suspension dynamics which has ultimately reduced costs and even development time. The idea or issue that is presented can be further experienced first-hand through virtual objects and understand the exact location and where it exists. With the ability to show various individual component objects with AR, Volvo has made plans to give customers an AR experience of the safety features designed in the Volvo cars. With the HoloLens, customers would be able to view every detail of the car before purchase. For example, the ability to open up the car, viewing and customising colours and modifications of the car. The reason behind choosing this case study is to get an idea of where the HoloLens stands in terms of automotive production and value, and whether it provides a deeper understanding to users that want to get an idea of specific components.
Another case study was on High tech white cane & HoloLens. This app is still in development. What this project allows is the ability to use sound as a means of navigating the environment around you, which is optimal for blind people to utilise. The higher the frequency the closer the object, and the lower the frequency, the further the object is from the user. This concept was designed like a bat’s biological sonar detecting sensors where sound is bounced back through an echo to detect obstacles, their path and to also locate food. To clear out any confusion between different layers of objects such as floors and walls and other objects, the sound feedback given towards the user is different. This project is a great example in utilising the sound features of the HoloLens to actually gain understanding of your real environment. One minor setback of the project though may be where an object is blocking something behind that object so you wouldn’t know if there was something behind the first layer of the environment that was scanned. However the continuous spatial mapping should at least minimise these instances and hopefully bring the user to understand that and differentiate the various layers of objects.
Lastly, HoloLens is a gaming app that contains holographic people to interact with you and your unique environment, and solve a mystery designed in the game. Essentially, the room that the user is in is the crime scene which various hidden objects are blended in with the real objects. The life size people are designed to be realistic by tracking your head movements and your position in the room. The holograms will interact with your real environment that was spatially mapped in the scan, and will appear like they’re really there in the room.
The holographic person as expected isn’t realistic as actual humans, and does have that gaming graphics representation feel to the people, but the models of the characters are close to the level of realism.
The unique thing about this project is the interaction between holographic people and us and how we can decide on how we interact with the virtual people. By using this concept, we can utilise or even take inspiration for holographic people to help in our everyday activities. For example, in the supermarket, the use of Holographic people can direct us in where to find certain products or give us details in which the product is useful for. In terms of utilisation of realistic sized holograms of people, it can be a great representation in showing future designs and architecture to give it a more realistic view, than just the 3D virtual building.
Week 3
Research into stress & statistics
Stress isn’t considered bad in small doses, due to the fact that it helps you perform under pressure to reach certain goals or expectations, and also motivate you to get there. However anything beyond these small doses, stress can really start causing damage to your health, your emotions, productivity and the quality of your life. The way stress affects a person is different with everyone, and everyone encounters problems and obstacles in their lives, but ultimately they choose or have different reactions to face them and deal with them. Furthermore, different factors can vary the stress tolerance levels such as:
· The people around (Network)
· Self-Control
· Knowledge and preparations
· Attitude and outlook
In terms of statistics,
The top five causes of stress in Australia over the five years are:
- Personal finances — 49 per cent;
- Family issues — 45 per cent;
- Personal health — 44 per cent;
- Trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle — 40 per cent; and
- Issues with the health of others close to us — 38 per cent.
The five most popular ways of managing stress in Australia over the five years are:
- Watching television/ movies — 85 per cent;
- Focusing on the positives — 81 per cent;
- Spending time with friends and/ or family — 81 per cent;
- Listening to music — 80 per cent; and
- Reading — 75 per cent.
This research was done to get a concept of what the overall design of the pavilion might end up being.
Week 4
I then moved onto developing and collaborating with Mobile AR than of the Hololens.
In this week I designed my very own Mobile Ar application!
Through various tutorials and online help, I was able to test out various prototypes that could help me start on building an AR mobile applications. Firstly I started with trying to project simple text from an image target. To do this, the image had to be uploaded onto the Vuforia developer portal website to obtain a license key and the image tracker package to be used for unity.
The next step was to build the prototype of simple text images in unity. Although it took a while for the prototype to work initially, I finally managed to get it working as seen below.
The next step after simple text was to design images to be projected from the image tracker, this step was surprisingly easier than the previous step as it only took the effort of change from text to images. A problem did arise initially as the image did not show up in unity. However, I managed to find a solution to reset the image from unity in the settings shown in the image below.
Next step I took was to project 3d objects and interactivity of the holographic objects. This required various tutorials and online research to get an understanding of getting this to work. As seen below, I have created a maze like structure that utilises a sphere object that has physical characteristics such as gravity and movement features.
