Midway through the week our spring finally arrived, just in time for us to do some final testing of our demos before presentation.
We attempted to do a live demo of the machine in the RPIS during our presentation, which ended up having a lot of issues:
- We attempted to use a camera to livestream the demo, but that just created a 2d version of the 3d machine, which defeats the whole point
- The light from the projector hit the dome and created a glare, so someone had to hold their jacket up over the machine
- Due to other teams that day having props as well, our machine needed to be stuck in the corner, so many people didn’t even see it
- The camera needed to be very specifically focused, but as soon as a door opening to the RPIS changed the lighting, the focus went to shit.
In hindsight, we should have just shown the videos of our demos that we had taken, but since we had the Voxon (working) for a week, not all the faculty had been able to see it live. For finals, we will just show video 🙂
While preparing for the presentation, we compiled a list of learnings that is a nice tldr; for the semester:
Fave learnings/concepts
- Blurring of line reality v device
- Interaction is core to experience
- First time, everyone spends more than ten mins (even for simple models), take pictures, novelty aspect
- How important social aspect is – campfire effect
- Where the people are around the machine. Orientation!! Inverted controls!!
- Playing with height and frequency, more dynamic things on the inside, how these values affect flicker
- Geometry looks really good regardless of experience of modeling. Everything feels like an object, detailed, looks good
- Color modes can really affect perception based on sci-fi bias and expectations of the machine
- People have preconceived notion of holographic displays, how do we play into it
- Psychedelic, undulating motions, hypnotic stuff looks good -> longest time (especially in right frame of mind 😉 )
Dislikes
- Limited size
- Flicker
- Fragility
- Some Shader/materials don’t work
- Some visuals don’t directly translate
- Lack of dedicated GPU
- Strobing and eye strain
- Unable to see in light, lighting settings don’t work
- Interface sucks
- Full color is less crispy
Fave interfaces
- Leap motion
- IMU like phones
- Xbox controllers
- MIDI
- Vive controllers