I co-directed Upbeat, a multiplayer AR rhythm game sponsored by Magic Leap that debuted at the 2019 USC Games Expo keynote. Hundreds of students experienced it at USC Springfest, USC’s student-organized spring music festival.

Our pitch to the USC faculty panel was greenlit as one of several capstone game projects in 2019. I co-directed the game as my senior capstone project for USC Games.

How to play Upbeat

Players wear Magic Leap AR headsets that visually overlay the game over the real world, allowing players to use their hands to naturally interact with 3D virtual objects and collaborate with other players in a shared space. Each game is a collaborative performance under a huge inflatable dome with reactive LED lighting.

During the experience, 4 players interact with the soundtrack and each other by physically high-fiving beats and tracing musical flows. Gathering energy while tracing a music flow gives points. High-fiving beats as they travel toward you increases your combo multiplier!

Game systems

I architected most of the game’s systems and networking. Here are some highlights:

• Music playback and visualizer system that supports authoring levels using MIDI events
• Easy calibration sequence which measures player height/armspan and their relative position in the space using a visual marker
• Headset and game management system that allowed us to “ready up” players, start the round, and diagnose issues
• Low-latency music playhead sync using OSC over UDP
• Spectator mode with AR overlay recording
• Cross-platform AR/VR abstraction layer that allowed us to develop on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift