Catch These Hands is a hackathon project for SF Hacks 2017, created by a team of student developers. Over the course of > 24 hours, we created an immersive virtual experience with support for controller free user interaction using a hand motion sensor.
We created the project using the Unity game engine, building onto a consumer model Oculus Rift virtual reality (VR) headset borrowed from MLH. We modified the VR headset (seen below) to track hand motions by mounting a Leap Motion (also MLH) sensor to the front of the device.
Here is a front view of the Oculus VR with Leap Motion sensor
The placement of the sensor necessitates that the user is staring at their hands while operating them. This is a hardware issue, but is normal user behavior.
To complete our completely professional hardware mod, we relied on Duck Tape (also MLH).
Aerial view of our map, created with free assets found on the Unity store but customized and laid out by our team (not as easy as it sounds).
Our original idea for the interactive game mechanic was to have the user grab an axe and cut down trees. After realizing that the physics behind making the tree "fall" was not feasible, we pivoted to having players move boxes scattered throughout the map.
The final version of our project can be opened in Unity with the folder Roll a ball Game version 2.0. This name comes from the original Unity tutorial on
rolling a ball, although ironically after the latest release added a large ball
in addition to the boxes to interact with, the name is once again relevant.
We are 4 students (3 college, 1 high school) from various parts of the United States (San Francisco Bay Area, Central Coast, and Florida) who met at this event.
- Conor Forgey (@conorforgey)
- Brandon Taylor (@Brando-Commando)
- Russell Villanueva (@villanuevarussell)
- August Valera (@4U6U57)