Project thoughts

A few folks have asked me to suggest project ideas.  First, let me pull some text from the project proposal page from the last time I ran this course, where I said:

You should consider these projects as mini research projects.  Simply implementing something that you think might be fun (like a game or 3D environment), or re-implementing something someone else has done, is not acceptable. You should have a question you are asking, hypothesis you are testing or new technology idea you are exploring.  In short, you should be doing something that could (in theory) be submitted to an academic conference.  Of course, I do not expect all projects to be of a level that would result in a top-tier conference publication;  however, the basic approach should be the same.  We will spend time in class talking about what this might mean;  I am also happy to discuss ideas with students individually.

This is a good way to think about it.  To make it clearer, I added this line to the project proposal page, as a 6th point to include on your proposal:

Include an annotated bibliography of related projects or papers.  (By annotated, I mean include a sentence or two about each project or paper, saying how it relates to what you are thinking about)

So, what does this mean in practice, and what might some projects be?   Most of the ideas I will suggest leverage Argon, because that’s what I’ve been thinking about lately.

  • Implement a game or application of AR or VR.  The focus should be specifically those parts that are “interesting” and unique about the idea.  This would be what you’d want for research, or if you were trying to convince someone of the validity of the concept.  Consider an outdoor MR/AR game like Google’s Ingress;  what would it mean to make it “really” AR, or to build an desktop “VR” companion game to let folks join in who aren’t out moving around?  How does the game change?  What is the new kind of “fun”?
  • Mobile Facebook games.  Is there anything “interesting” about “Farmville + mobile AR”?  Mobile MR?
  • A 3D AR/VR presentation program (“Prezzi + AR”).  I’ve talked to students over the past few years about something like this, and really like the idea.  But, if you really consider what would be useful to someone giving real presentations, it’s not as obvious how to structure it.
  • Take any of the 3D UI interaction metaphors in Bowman, and think about them in the context of tablet/phone-based AR.  Some make less sense (e.g., techniques for travel) but some are clearly interesting and different.
  • 3D Visualization.  Both Hafez and I are very interested in ideas about Vis and what it means to do Vis in AR.  We have a bunch of ideas on what that might mean, so having a group explore one of the ideas is appealing.
  • Create a mirror world of part of campus, to support collaborative social experiences.  Watch this video of something we did with Unity years ago, pre-Argon.  It would be much easier now, with Argon: 

Obviously, some of these are much more “research publication ready” that others (and some, like the 3D Vis concepts, are ones that we’d really want to work closely with you on, because they are research we’re already thinking about).

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