Pikspace

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  Our beautiful scenery

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  Another shot that you can take with our camera

Inspiration

The idea was developed by a member who is very passionate about photography. He realized the cost of entry to quality cameras as well as the troubles of travelling to real life locations only to realize you forgot your lens at home. With a virtual space using virtual reality, you would be able to simulate and practice using a DSLR in an environment of your choice before committing to the real thing.

What it is

Pikspace aims to be a realistic camera simulator above all else. When you strap on your vr headset, you'll be transported into a photorealistic vista armed with a life-like DSLR. With this DSLR, you can take various photos of the beautiful landscape, as well as change several parameters such as ISO and aperture. After taking your photos, they are saved to your photo album, where you can reminisce over the great time you had taking them.

How we built it

Pikspace was built using Unity and its vr framework. We also used meta quest headsets that we borrowed for development.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge we ran into was that our virtual camera that we used for our virtual DSLR was not working for our selected rendering pipeline, which basically meant that we had to restart all of our work related to the graphics since we would have to change our projects renderer. This ended up working out for the better though, as the newer renderer provided better lighting for pictures. Another challenge we had was decided how to implement the camera settings. Real life cameras utilize intricate knobs and switches which don't translate too well with the controllers we had. Our design choice was to create a large menu that would allow for easier tuning of picture parameters while still being intricate enough to perfect the photo.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're very proud of the simulated DSLR camera that we developed, as the parameters that you can set for it correspond quite well to actual real life values. Additionally, we think the photo album is note-worthy, as it adds persistence to our experience. Finally, we're proud of the map that our designer we created, as it was sculpted from scratch to have optimal photo-taking angles.

What we learned

One thing we learned was developing in a Unity environment. This entailed learning C# for some of us as well as script making in C# in general. Another thing that was a big learning hurdle for all of us was the use of vr technologies. There's a lot of things that are natural in the real world that requires accommodation in the vr space, and learning how we could interact with our camera was an informative experience.

What's next for Pikspace

One thing we plan to do is expand the variety of environments for picture taking. We have a lovely forest right now, but we imagine being able to change between a variety of biomes and weather conditions (such as snowing). Additionally, we plan on adding more camera features such as film simulation and light meters.

Built With

• c#
• unity
• vr