Most of my projects can be found on my Devpost, at https://devpost.com/connor-a-smith. This may be easier than viewing projects here.
We all have something to be proud of! These are projects that I specifically selected and want to share for an exceptional reason. If a project is on this list, then it served as a defining and revelatory milestone in my growth as a developer. These projects aren't necessarily the most technically challenging, but I believe they provide a better idea of who I am, and who I aspire to be, as an innovator. Projects are listed in order of importance, and I hope you enjoy reading about my work!
Sensory
Most Creative & Education Grand Prize
Tree Hacks (Stanford), February 2017
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Sensory is an HTC Vive Virtual Reality experience that allows users to experiment with different disorders from Visual, Cognitive, or Auditory disorder categories. Upon selecting a specific impairment, the user is subjected to what someone with that disorder may experience, and can view more information on the disorder. Some examples include achromatopsia, a rare form of complete colorblindness, and prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces. Users can combine these effects, view their surroundings from new perspectives, and educate themselves on how various disorders work. Our goal is to educate and expose users to the various names, effects, and natures of conditions that are difficult to fully comprehend without first-hand experience. Doing so can allow individuals to empathize with and learn from various different disorders.
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Cell VR 1.0
3rd Place Overall
HackingEDU, October 2015
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Cell VR is an educational Virtual Reality game that actually teaches biology from inside of a human cell. As you turn your head and look around, molecules are floating and combining together to simulate various combinations that actually occur inside of a cell. Using the Sixense Razer Hydras, we provided the user with two virtual hands that they could control by moving and rotating hand controllers, allowing anyone to actually reach out and create biochemical reactions by smashing cell molecules together! Cell VR has the power to teach education in the most innovative way possible, and inspire a passion for a subject that may otherwise require tedious memorization.
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Another Day
USAA Most Collaborative Team Award
Hack Arizona, January 2016
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Another Day is an extremely powerful project that uses Virtual Reality to spread awareness, and empathy, about the severity of depression. We surveyed people who suffered from depression, and built our project around their stories. Through Another Day, those who have never experienced depression can begin to understand life from the perspective of someone who has. Depression is a powerful force that, most often, can only be understood from the inside. Our team used VR as the reputable "empathy machine" to inform, educate, and open a discussion about a subject that one must truly experience to understand,
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Diver
Best VR/Game Hack
HackSC, November 2015
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Diver is a Virtual Reality experience designed to spread awareness about ocean pollution. The player is initially placed underwater, and can use the Sixense Razer Hydras to swim and enjoy the beauty of underwater marine life (There's even a whale!), and the Oculus Rift to actually look around. However, there's a catch: The ocean is filled with trash, and it's the player's job to swim around and clean up that trash. Diver is a creation based on the desire to make a positive difference in the world. It transcends the purpose of a regular VR game, and is far more of a message we want to send out in order to achieve social good.
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A "Hackathon" is a 24-36 hour event where students can form teams and create any project of their choice, with very few limitations and an incredible amount of support. These weekend competitions provide collaborative environments where developers can work together, improve skills, and make crazy ideas come to life. I've made it my goal to attend as many Hackathons as possible, and below you will find the results of that mission, all listed chronologically.
Sensory
Most Creative & Education Grand Prize
Tree Hacks (Stanford), February 2017
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Sensory is an HTC Vive Virtual Reality experience that allows users to experiment with different disorders from Visual, Cognitive, or Auditory disorder categories. Upon selecting a specific impairment, the user is subjected to what someone with that disorder may experience, and can view more information on the disorder. Some examples include achromatopsia, a rare form of complete colorblindness, and prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces. Users can combine these effects, view their surroundings from new perspectives, and educate themselves on how various disorders work. Our goal is to educate and expose users to the various names, effects, and natures of conditions that are difficult to fully comprehend without first-hand experience. Doing so can allow individuals to empathize with and learn from various different disorders.
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Scaleforce
HackArizona, January 2017
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What if you could manipulate the size of your surroundings with the wave of a hand? What if you could grow to the size of a planet, and shrink to the height of a spider? Scaleforce is a Virtual Reality experience that gives you this power, allowing the player to scale their world in order to reach the stars. We aimed to use VR to create a unique and immersive puzzle game where the user must change sizes in order to solve challenges and progress. Built using the HTC Vive, the Unity Game Engine, and C#, Scaleforce combines classic "escape room" mechanics with the interactive nature of room-scale VR. In seconds, a toothpick can become a sword, and a match can become a torch.
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Virtualingo
Best VR Hack & Best Gaming Hack
CalHacks 3.0, November 2016
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Virtualingo is an educational Virtual Reality experience born from a passion to teach language through immersion. Virtual Reality is a technology that can transport people across the world, and we sought to use this power for education. Our experience places the user in a Mexican diner, where they're responsible for taking orders in Spanish, building traditional Mexican cuisine using a variety of ingredients, and ultimately delivering a delicious meal to a satisfied customer. Virtualingo was designed to teach more than just language, but also culture and tradition.
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Vivace
MHacks 8, October 2016
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Vivace is an HTC Vive Virtual Reality experience, which means users can actually move around in the 3D space we created. The game begins in a large concert hall with several attendees clapping, and the player will begin a tutorial on how to conduct using a baton. The tutorial consists of several lessons on tempo, movement, and how to effectively conduct. We used colored panels to show where the player should hit with their baton on certain beats, and these panels light up on their respective beats. Once the tutorial is over and the player was walked through the basics, we let them actually conduct real music. The panels will light up according to the beats-per-minute of actual songs, and the conductor must keep up and hit the correct panels on the correct beats in order for the music to make sense.
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Chemistry Lab VR
SB Hacks, April 2016
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Chemistry Lab VR is an educational experience that can virtually simulate lab procedures and important lab safety measures. The user is immediately immersed inside a Virtual Reality laboratory, and can begin walking around using the HTC Vive to interact with the environment. There are lab procedures and safety guides spread across the tables, and a great deal of lab equipment that can be picked up, placed, thrown, or actually used in real lab procedures.
The first step is to actually put on your goggles, which can be grabbed and physically placed on the user's head for full immersion. After that, it's free reign over lab experiments. For example, it's completely possible for the user to grab a beaker, fill it with water from the sink, place a ring stand on the Bunsen burner, place the beaker on the ring stand, and boil water. An even cooler experiment involves burning steel wool to observe an increase in mass. |
Another Day
Most Collaborative Team Award | Finalist
Hack Arizona, January 2016 | USC Medical Empathy Hackathon, September 2016
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Another Day is an extremely powerful project that uses Virtual Reality to spread awareness, and empathy, about the severity of depression. We surveyed people who suffered from depression, and built our project around their stories. Through Another Day, those who have never experienced depression can begin to understand life from the perspective of someone who has. Depression is a powerful force that, most often, can only be understood from the inside. Our team used VR as the reputable "empathy machine" to inform, educate, and open a discussion about a subject that one must truly experience to understand,
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Solitude
HackUCI, November 2015
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Solitude is an attempt to reflect on a potential relationship between artificial intelligence and humanity. We wanted to fully capture the feeling behind being entirely alone with just a computer, but also suggest that maybe Artificial Intelligence is a close ally. We used Virtual Reality to provide the immersive aspect of the game, and we especially wished to convey the sense of isolation and loneliness that comes with being trapped in outer space. In the game, you are the sole survivor on a ship powered by an AI named ANNA. As you progress through the game, fighting hostile ships with ANNA, you are able to either upgrade yourself or upgrade your AI. The ending depends on which you chose to prioritize.
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Diver
Best VR / Game Hack
HackSC, November 2015
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Diver is a Virtual Reality experience designed to spread awareness about ocean pollution. The player is initially placed underwater, and can use the Sixense Razer Hydras to swim and enjoy the beauty of underwater marine life (There's even a whale!), and the Oculus Rift to actually look around. However, there's a catch: The ocean is filled with trash, and it's the player's job to swim around and clean up that trash. Diver is a creation based on the desire to make a positive difference in the world. It transcends the purpose of a regular VR game, and is far more of a message we want to send out in order to achieve social good.
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Cell VR 1.0
3rd Place Overall
HackingEDU, October 2015
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Cell VR is an educational Virtual Reality game that actually teaches biology from inside of a human cell. As you turn your head and look around, molecules are floating and combining together to simulate various combinations that actually occur inside of a cell. Using the Sixense Razer Hydras, we provided the user with two virtual hands that they could control by moving and rotating hand controllers, allowing anyone to actually reach out and create biochemical reactions by smashing cell molecules together! Cell VR has the power to teach education in the most innovative way possible, and inspire a passion for a subject that may otherwise require tedious memorization.
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VR Hub
HackGT, September 2015
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The VR Hub is a one-of-a-kind application that allows users to build and enjoy their own 360 degree workspaces. Through immersive virtual reality, users can customize their own space with unique backgrounds, music, and browser interfaces. Our VR Hub is designed to be entirely gaze-based and user friendly, without any unnecessary complications or needless input mechanisms. In a matter of seconds, one can personalize their 360 background by picking a theme of their choice. There are applications available such as an Internet browser, YouTube video access, and an in-app music player. VR Hub opens web pages in the 360 space and enables users to select and drag web pages around them, below them, and even above them. Your own space has never been more flexible! It's time to take another step toward our futures.
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Lucid VR
HackAZ, March 2015
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As college students, we understand what it means to be stressed. We all have that feeling of wanting to sit quietly on a beach and listen to the ocean, watch a beautiful sunset as it stretches across the sky, stare out across a city while rain gently falls, or even enter into a surreal dream where physics no longer applies. All of these situations have the same thing in common: They are relaxing, meditative, calming, and even therapeutic. Our project offers each one of these different scenes to the user, complete with appropriate soundtracks. One can choose their desired "dream", and proceed to enter into a peaceful world where the only goal is to relax. Virtual Reality makes the environment feel exceptionally real, unlike any other experience ever could.
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Psychic
SB Hacks, February 2015
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Our team sought to not only provide an enjoyable experience to all in the form of a game, but also inspire awe in the minds of those who had not yet been exposed to the incredible hardware and software we were able to work with. Using Unity, Oculus, and the Leap Motion, we made a game capable of truly expanding the bounds of human imagination. Stretch out your hand and manipulate objects with ease, easily reverse gravity on materials around you, or even master physics and fly around the map with a telekinetic grappling hook. Those who have conquered the human mind are truly free.
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Elemagic
HackSC, November 2014
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We wrote this program for the imaginative, the creative, those who wish to explore and reach their full potential, by providing a virtual environment where almost anything is possible. Through capturing the elements of fire, water, earth, and air, the player can interact with a gorgeous landscape created by our team in Unity, and achieve any number of dreams through these capabilities. Virtual reality and the Oculus Rift makes the experience all the more real for the gamer, and for us as developers, through complete and thorough immersion into our project. By spreading fingers, the user can shoot flaming fireballs into the distance, launch boulders that collide with surroundings and roll across the landscape, fly with the power of air, or create a flowing fountain of water from the hand.
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Many courses at UC San Diego require a major project that serves as a large part of the class, and provide a lot of freedom when it comes to ideas. These classes span across different disciplines, subjects, and purposes, and given the opportunity, I seek to integrate my personal interests with the required criteria for class projects. Below, you will find projects I've selected from coursework that I believe aligned seamlessly with my aspirations as a developer. Entries are listed chronologically
The Minigame Game
CSE165: 3D User Interaction, Winter 2017
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The Minigame Game similar to the classic “Wario Ware” Nintendo games. In those games, the player must beat a long series of fast-paced short “mini-games”, each of which require some form of different interaction (shake, poke, pull, swipe, etc…). Our goal is to do the same, but vary different types of interaction using 3D controllers in VR. For example: Slice, flip, hit, shoot, throw, etc. The user, while playing, will have to perform these actions in quick succession. Once the first minigame begins, they will have 5-10 seconds to beat the minigame, which could be something as simple as slicing a piece of fruit, opening a door, throwing a dart, or flipping a pancake. If they succeed, they will immediately move on to the next minigame, which will again last roughly 5-10 seconds. In each minigame, we want to demonstrate some unique aspect of 3D interaction: Something that couldn’t be done with any type of controller.
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CrystalScape: Spectrum
CSE167: Computer Graphics, Spring 2016
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CrystalScape: Spectrum is a Virtual Reality visual experience that places users in the middle of a dystopian city that's being consumed by crystals. Rain falls in every direction, and as you move around from atop a building, you can gaze out toward the infinite horizon and witness the beauty of a massive cityscape.
This project was made using OpenGL and created for CSE167 Computer Graphics at UC San Diego, Spring 2016. We wanted to challenge ourselves by implementing the project in Virtual Reality using OpenGL, a task we had never confronted before. The VR adds a fantastic layer of awe to an already breathtaking randomly-generated city. Detailed shadow mapping also creates a more beautiful scene, and audible rain falls to add yet another level of detail and aesthetic. |
Students for Success: Life Skills Game
ENG100D: Design for Development, Winter 2016
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In the modern world, there is a lack of education regarding basic “life skills” that are often required upon entering adulthood. These skills range from financial literacy to healthy eating, and the unfortunate reality is that most children are unable to obtain this information in an appealing way. Our team has sought to create an educational and entertaining video-game that can teach basic life skills to young audiences, and educate them on concepts that may not be discovered through ordinary academic curriculum. We hope that children, with this knowledge, can be more prepared for their futures. This project was requested by Angela Brannon-Baptiste for the It’s All About The Kids foundation, a group seeking to benefit the lives of less-fortunate children.
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Live or Let Die
MGT16: Personal Ethics at Work, Fall 2015
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Live or Let Die is a Virtual Reality ethics simulation that was created for a class presentation. Our group chose to analyze the ethical dilemma of, as a doctor, prescribing life-ending medication to terminally ill patients. I created a Virtual Reality experience that places you in that doctor's shoes, in order to experience what it might be like to make an ethical decision. A wealth of information on the patient is available in the room, as well as doctor's notes that might represent what someone in a similar position may be thinking. This experience was presented during our final showcase, as a way of helping audience members understand the situation before we analyzed it for them.
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Survival of the Fittest
CAT3: Culture, Art, and Technology 3, Spring 2015
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Survival of the Fittest let's you experience an alien invasion as if you were actually there. The purpose of our class was to explore different concepts of "aliens", and we chose to create a graphic novel that explores benevolent artificial intelligence and malicious extraterrestrial beings. I created a Virtual Reality experience to accompany our final project. The Virtual Reality portion consists of two separate scenes, the first of which is an alien invasion, and the second is the battle scene from our visual novel. Both give the user a sense of helplessness as the alien invasion occurs, and as they are rescued by robots.
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