Mind Palace wins SWSG Mega Hackathon 2018

October 30, 2018

We won! Grand Champions! What an incredible 3 day hackathon we had, 28th to 30th September. Our team was made up of Cedric Sommer [Hustler], Zhang Weiran [Hustler], Jek Tan [Designer] and me, Eugene Soh [Developer].

The project we made in 54 hours was, Mind Palace, it is a Virtual Reality experience for dementia patients to immerse themselves in an environment of familiarity. The environment can be their old home that doesn’t exist anymore or a familiar in Singapore that most of the elderly here would know, i.e. the old national day stadium.

The demo I built was a Mind Palace for myself to use when dementia eventually creeps up on me. It is a vr environment of my old house, littered with photos of myself and my loved ones.

We built something amazing last night and the judges placed their biggest bet on us,I can’t wait to share our project, Mind Palace, but for now I need sleep. whole team needs sleep.

This was absolutely surreal. This is my second Hackathon since graduation and I happened to be in the winning team for both! 100% win rate. Startup Weekend Singapore was really generous and with a much bigger crowd compared to my last one, there were so many mentors, the gift bag was super, the food never ran out and there was plenty of beer!

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Kinect Boxing – Throw real punches at your friends without actually hurting them!

September 26, 2018

This is a Kinect Fighting game I made! Kinect Boxing, previously known as Kinect Fighter. I Always thought a fighting game like this was the most obvious use of the Kinect. I was surprised that no one did it this way! My game uses 1 to 1 motion capture to let you fight in whatever way you want – unlike those made by Microsoft where the characters do their own polished animated punch and kicks after it recognizes your punches. In my game, players can fight in their own unique way.

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VR for the elderly (Granny Wheel Chair Racing)

September 22, 2018

Channel New Asia featured me in a 1 hour episode, teaching 4 elderly folks how to code and make a Virtual Reality Game. You can watch all the drama unfold here on toggle.
It was tricky teaching them elderly, some of them were confused between double clicking and single clicking, one shouldn’t expect too much i suppose. As much as i hate to admit, it was the two guys who did way better than the two girls. #GenderSterotype
The producers and I picked the best student’s work and got him (Victor) to finish up his game so I could turn it into a working virtual reality game to let the elderly folks at NTUC Health Nursing Home (Geylang East) try it.
While finishing his game I thought it would be interesting to turn it into a VR Wheel Chair game. So i did!

It is the third and final episode in a series, #DontForgetMe, where they introduce technology like phones, Facebook, Instagram and virtual reality to elderly folks in Singapore.
#DontForgetMe – Channel News Asia
“When forgotten and overlooked seniors are taught how to make use of Facebook, Instagram and even virtual reality by Singapore’s hippest social media stars … can these seniors be empowered to change the world ?”
Episode 3 – Seniors Go Virtual:
“In the finale, four senior tech ambassadors want “in” on the latest trend – virtual reality gaming ! They team up with famous tech-savvy creator, DUDE SG, to learn VR coding from scratch and craft a VR game made for elderly and retired Singaporeans.”

Dancing Doodles: PAssion Arts Fest at Bishan Park

July 23, 2017

Dancing Doodles is a live motion capture dance installation that I made in collaboration with 150 kindergartners! It was exhibited at the PAssion Arts Fest at Bishan Ang Moh Kio Park for 2 days on the 1st and 2nd of July 2017.

Characters are drawn by kindergartners 5 & 6 years old and are animated via motion capture from an Xbox One Kinect. I made this with Unity.

Dancing Doodles was also known as “My Avatar” at the event.

The dance installation. Where the kids would control their drawings by standing in front of the screen and dancing.

The drawing workshops conducted by Nat Wee where the kids drew characters for the installation. I was there making sure they were using my template correctly

ArchiGallery: Listening To Architecture Virtual Tour Installation at National Gallery Singapore

July 10, 2017

There are some cool areas at National Gallery Singapore(NGS) that are not accessible to the public, either because they are dangerous to get to or because they have become part of their private offices. I was commissioned by NGS to create a two virtual tour installations for two areas at the Old Supreme Court Wing – they are the main dome (the roof) and the prisoners walkway where prisoners walk to enter the court room from their holding cells.

The Microsoft Kinect One motion sensor and the instructions for visitors

Visitors stand in front of my installation and wave their hands around to navigate the tour without touching the installation. This is important because the installation is permanent and having a contact-less experience would minimize wear and tear. Typical virtual tours would use a headset that would probably break within a year.

This virtual tour is part of the ArchiGallery: Listening To Architecture exhibition where I am also responsible for another exhibit: The Construction Sequence Animation. I could have done the whole video myself but I out-sourced to my go-to 3D modeler, Zig!

This is a video I shot on my phone during the opening ceremony. The animation I made for them has no audio and I had no idea they were going to screen it like that during the opening, so it was interesting to watch the Emcee narrate my work.

This is where my construction animation sequence is silently on display every day. Level 4 of the city hall wing at NGS

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Team Dude wins the 48 hour VR Hackathon!

July 9, 2017

vr_hackathon_winners_team_dude — Team Dude wins the 48hour French VR hackathon

We won the Wonda VR 48h VR South East Asia Hackathon with our immersive interactive 360 video project, LUMI. As the winning team, our project is also exhibited as part of the Human+ Show at ArtScrience Museum until the 15th October 2017.

You can go experience our project between 2:30pm to 4:30pm everyday at the HUMAN+ Show at the Museum. Why its only open for 2 hours? Its is because the installation requires gallery sitters to help you with the VR headsets.

About Our Project:
LUMI is an under-utilized robot room assistant. Although LUMI can perform 120 tasks, LUMI’s current user has disabled most of its functions and only uses it to turn the lights on and off.
This virtual reality experience addresses the relation of humans in a not-so distant future living with robot companions who act as extended tools performing our daily tasts. LUMI won the first prize of the South East Asia Hackathon

About LUMI:

The user plays as LUMI, an under-utilized robot room assistant. Although LUMI can perform 120 tasks, LUMI’s current user (played by yours truly) has disabled most of its functions and only use it to turn the lights on and off.

So basically, you play as an AI to turn my room lights on and off while creepily watching me in my room. You can choose to obey to me or not. For example: Turning the lights off while I’m having a shower will lead to a hilarious out-come of me coming out the shower with shampoo in my hair.

We shot everything in my room at home, which really saved us a tonne of time because we didn’t need to scout for locations or travel at all; we only had 48 hours from the start to the finish. I’m quite proud of what we done.

You can also go check it out on the Wonda VR app.