A pre-show AR music installation produced in collaboration with the band Moontower (@thisismoontower). We demoed the experience to around 300 attendees over the course of several shows. Attendees stepped inside a lit pod to experience the 3-minute interactive music video.

A student collective I co-founded called Merciv created the experience around Moontower’s music debut and artistic vision. The collective was made up of a dozen artists, developers, and business students.

Engineering challenges

I led the engineering team that integrated the full tech stack that allowed us to run guests through multiplayer, wireless, 6-DOF AR experience — in 2017, before this was available off the shelf! Our final experience used Mira Prism AR headsets, Unity, Vive trackers, and a Leap Motion controller.

While building this, we learned how difficult it was to build both quality and cost-effective AR experiences using the current tech.

High-end headsets were too expensive and fragile to be used in a lively concert setting with attendees switching in and out every few minutes. Low-cost headsets lacked features and visual quality for a compelling AR experience. It’s a fine tradeoff but I think we struck the right balance for this experience.

I also personally learned a lot about how to manage a team of people with varying skillsets and who have limited bandwidth (because of school). Lots of planning, high-level architecture, and realistic scoping of tasks!