Aresi Labs, an innovation consulting company, partnered Adform to launch the first virtual reality hackathon in Lithuania. With 60+ participants, 13 teams and projects ranging from ultrasound-based positional tracking solution for mobile VR to a mind-controlled game or a VR-based web browsing experience, the event was widely considered as a success that should strengthen the Lithuanian VR community.

Audrius Zujus, founder and CEO of Aresi Labs and a passionate enthusiast for virtual reality (VR), says Vilnius has a fascinating software development community and a vibrant gamedev scene, and yet people working with VR are somehow scattered among a couple of game development and film companies. For this reason, he came up with VR Hack, a virtual reality hackathon, that took place at the jazzy Adform office on 8-10 of April in Vilnius.

“We’re really fascinated to see 13 strong teams having formed at the hackathon, many of whom made truly mature and advanced products. I believe we all proved we have a huge interest for VR in Lithuania that translates into exciting ideas and projects when we’re all together. This inspired for further steps to move the VR scene another step forward”, – A. Zujus said. He also mentioned he plans an event in Vilnius where VR and VR-based solutions would be introduced to the general public.

The winners

This time, every participant of the hackathon could cast his vote except, obviously, for its own team. The teams were competing in three categories: Best VR App, Best Concept and Friendliest Team.

The friendliest teams, that were the most helpful over the course of hackathon for other participants:

• Stop Right There! They made a game were the player is a traffic policeman and needs to keep an eye on both the drivers and the pedestrians so accidents are avoided.

• Trafi VR. They made a multiplayer VR game where a treasure hunter is flying on a Persian carpet around an uninhabited island whilst collecting diamonds and avoiding random things a god throws at him.

Best concept:

• XAVR. It’s a fully working proof of concept, a device that allows to control things in virtual reality with the help of a brainwave sensor. The team created a game where simply watching a black cube turns it red, and thinking about it makes it explode.

• Adform team – Browsing in VR. They created a prototype of how web 3.0 might look like. The concept is reminiscent of interstellar space with bubbles that one can “fly in” to and watch 360 videos or read headlines.

Best VR app:

• Positioning in Virtual Space. Some five years ago a team from Kaunas University of Technology created an indoor positioning system based on ultrasound devices. Now they extended the system to VR – they measured and mapped the Adform office with ultrasound sensors and recreated it in virtual reality with jaw-dropping precision. The concept could be used in architecture to change the design in real time, and also in gaming. Congratulations!

Other teams:

• Light my Fire – an inspirational app for creative people that shows dozens of associative pictures through a VR headset when a keyword is pronounced. This app was so inspiring that a team spun off during the third day of the hackathon and made…

• … Cat Invader! A cat shooting VR game inspired by the cat pictures from the Light my Fire team.

• Archisight, a mobile app that helps architects to showcase properties through VR. An architect can upload a 3D render to a web app and then it is converted into a virtual reality visualisation that customers can explore. The idea was initially born at the Hacker Games in Kaunas, and the team improved it in this hackathon by implementing a web sync feature.

• Data Dive. A VR game where the player jumps with a parachute and collects items such as floppy disks or servers.

• Roof Tops. A parkour simulation game based in Vilnius.

• Cats vs Dogs. An augmented reality board game where characters from paper cards come alive and fight each other.

• The Western Hunter, a multiplayer VR game where one needs to exit from the maze in a limited amount of time with bonuses for precise shooting.

• Don’t Blink. A VR horror game where one needs to react to a creepy face and avoid blinking.