Pancoholic

Obstacles

The main obstacle found in the project was getting the physics working correctly in the HTC Vive headset. At the beginning, we thought that the same physics we had in Unity would be displayed in the Vive headset, but that was not the case.

To overcome this obstacle, we found the solution of linking the VIVE Trackers to a joint in Unity, in this way forcing the update of the physics in the headset.

Challenges

The main challenge the project faced was, without doubt, achieving a proper pancake behaviour. Pancakes are soft body objects and cannot be represented as default rigid bodies in Unity. Several solutions were tested such as Third-party plugins or Bone-like behaviour with an armature set in Blender.

In the end, it was decided to create a PhysX framework running as a Unity Native plug-in. A C++ interface was export to Unity scripts, granting the C# layer the ability to manipulate the PhysX world.

Lessons Learned

The project was developed as a fully completed experience, with different types of orders, delivery confirmation, pancake cooking, and ingredient management. At the end of the day, what our users enjoyed the most was playing with the pancake physics in VR, which filled us with joy, since it was our goal from the very beginning of the project.