Hey everyone, this is our first Newsletter for Team mixAR!

This week has been very eventful, with everyone getting settled in sunny California, and all the fun that surrounds that.  For project work however, after getting to know each other, the team quickly dived into the problem presented by the problem (How do people interact with AI Agents in an AR environment — using Hololens), and came up with a two stage plan for executing on the project.

Step 1, Checkers:  This stage will likely go until Halfs, at longest. In it, we will construct an agent in real space to serve as a Checkers opponent to the Guest.  The Agent, Hereafter referred to as Mix, will react to your moves, being pleased, conceited, worried, etc.  Additionally, we will see how the experience changes if instead of playing against you, Mix stands over your shoulder and reacts to your play vs a more traditional computer opponent, or perhaps a real person.

Step 2, Something Unique:  After Halfs, we want to make our own game.  We have various ideas floating around, but nothing solid, as we want to learn as much as possible from the Checkers prototype before deciding on how best to utilize Mix.  In general though, we want to utilize all the technology developed in Checkers, along with the knowledge we’ve gained, to make a more physically based experience where the Guest must rely heavily on Mix to progress, and we want it to be very physically based to utilize the power of the Hololens.

Next week will be the start of our first sprint, where we will begin designing our first Checkers experience, Mix, and our core tech.  
In summary, we’ve started strong and there are no signs of that changing soon!  Keep checking back each week for further updates.