Stanford XR

This weekend, hundreds of innovative minds came together to push the boundaries of immersive technology at the Stanford XR Immerse the Bay Hackathon! 🌟 It was truly exciting to see what everyone came up with—so much creativity and out-of-the-box thinking in the world of AR, VR, and mixed reality! 🙌 A huge thank you to all the hackers for their passion and hard work, to our sponsors for making it all possible, and to the judges for their thoughtful feedback and support. Can’t wait to see how these projects shape the future of immersive tech! 🚀 Comment/repost with your favorite moments! #ImmerseTheBay #XRHackathon #Innovation

🎉 Big congrats to HomeGen.ai for winning the ShapesXR track at the hackathon! 🏆 Your tool that transforms architectural floor plans into true-to-scale, immersive walkthroughs is a game-changer. Your hard work, creativity, and vision have really shone through, and we can't wait to see where you take this amazing project next. 🥳

✨ Wow—what a week it's been since Immerse The Bay! ✨ I’m still in awe reflecting on this incredible hackathon that brought together hundreds of talented hackers, forward-thinking sponsors, and distinguished judges. This year’s event was a huge leap from last year, and I couldn’t be prouder of what we accomplished as a community! 💫 A massive shoutout goes to our team at Stanford XR—you are the heartbeat of this event. None of this would’ve been possible without your hard work, creativity, and dedication. Truly, I am standing on the shoulders of giants. 💪💡 Here’s to our amazing team: 🎉 Tenzin Chonzom (Co-President of Internal Affairs) 🎉 Willy Chan (VP of External Affairs) 🎉 Samuel Tong (VP of Internal Affairs) 🎉 Siya Goel (Financial Officer) 🎉 Lucas Wang (VP of Education) 🎉 Karan Soin (VP of Projects) 🎉 Ryan Hayashi (Webmaster) 🎉 Natalie Kuo (Marketing Director) 🎉 Cole Lee (Director of Creative Experiences) And of course, to our core organizers and interns: Steven Le, Komal Vij, Elizabeth Childs, Feolu Kolawole, Austin Kim, and Vencent Vang—your incredible support is deeply appreciated! A very special thank you to three key pillars of the event who don’t even attend Stanford yet poured their hearts into making this event extraordinary: Parth Arora, Zade Bosco Lobo, and David Gene Oh. You went above and beyond, and we’re so grateful! 🙏 And to our incredible partners at Unity (Greg Madison and Ketki J.) and Berkeley (James Hu)—thank you for sharing your expertise with hackers through such inspiring workshops! Your contributions made a lasting impact on this year’s Immerse The Bay. 🚀 This event wouldn’t have been possible without the generous support of our incredible sponsors. A huge thank you to: ⭐ Meta (David Scott Van Woert) ⭐ Snapchat (Steven Xu) ⭐ Amazon AWS (Evan Helda) ⭐ Ramen VR (Andy Tsen, Kristani Alcantara, and Lauren Frazier) ⭐ AWE (Georgeta Bocșe and Ori Inbar) ⭐ Nvidia/MarkIIISystems (Bruce McGowan and Melissa Hazzard) ⭐ ShapesXR (Inga Petryaevskaya and Ashleigh Lenamond, MBA) ⭐ Niantic (Chao Jin) ⭐ Immersal (May Masson) ⭐ Membit (Jay Van Buren) From awe-inspiring projects to new connections and unforgettable memories, this year’s Immerse The Bay was truly something special. Here's to many more milestones ahead for the XR community! 🚀 If you’d like to be part of this incredible journey next year or collaborate with Stanford XR, let’s connect! Join us at stanfordxr.org Video Credit: Cole Lee #StanfordXR #ImmerseTheBay #Hackathon #AR #VR #Innovation

I’m proud to announce that we won Snap AR’s prize 🏆 at Immerse the Bay for creating Rune Wars—the first competitive co-location multiplayer game 🎮 on the #SnapSpectacles. 🕶️ Rune Wars transforms eSports by blending physical movement with strategy in an immersive #AR experience. Players battle in a mystical world using gestures to launch attacks and build defenses—turning gaming into an active, engaging sport. 🏃♂️ 🎥 Watch our trailer here: https://lnkd.in/gNBb4EeX This project pushed boundaries, and I loved learning both #LensStudio and #TypeScript to bring out this vision to life. Huge thanks to Snap Inc. for their support: Steven Xu, Russell Patton, Katie L., Mitchell Kuppersmith, Aidan Wolf, and Kevin Habich. Without you all, this project would not have been possible. And of course, I also want to thank my amazing #hackathon team for the amazing memories and hard work. It was truly a collaborative effort, with all of us pitching in on both #design and #development stages. 🙌 - 🚀 Cole Lee, your experience with product management, XR design, and video editing is unmatched. - 🎨 Jessica Sheng, your ability to make all the models, textures, and shaders from scratch made our game look so polished. - 💪 Rylan Pozniak Daniels your talent to learn new frameworks for multiplayer, quickly iterate on anything asked, and peer program with others is invaluable. You can check out our project 🔗 below: - Devpost: https://lnkd.in/g8mKi99K - YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gZj2S2sC - GitHub: https://lnkd.in/gFWYBFWa - Article: https://lnkd.in/gaX7NK8h This hackathon is very meaningful to me. I went from being a #mentor, to being an #organizer, to now being a #winner of this Stanford XR hackathon. 🌟 Throughout my time, I learned the importance of these events for #uniting the AR/VR #community 🌎. I’d like to #acknowledge as many people as I can for supporting this hackathon and allowing it to flourish! 🎉 - 🛠️ Organizers: Emmanuel Corona, Tenzin Chonzom, Vencent Vang, William Song Liu, Zade Bosco Lobo, Parth Arora, Karan Soin, Ryan Hayashi. - 💰 Sponsors: David Gene Oh, Tipatat Chennavasin, Winston Esposito, Yihong X., Lauren Frazier, Kristani Alcantara, Inga Petryaevskaya. - ⚖️ Judges: Sebastian Yang, Davide Zhang, Luke Porwol, Mehek Gosalia, Yukun Song, Sining Huang, Jon Li, Chris Wren, Stephanie Perrault. Thank you all for making such a memorable event! ✨ #ImmerseTheBay #hackathon #xr #ar #vr #innovation #colocation #multiplayer #game #connected #social

I’m thrilled to share that we won Snap Inc.'s prize at the Stanford XR Immerse The Bay hackathon! We created Rune Wars, the first multiplayer game for 𝗦𝗻𝗮𝗽 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗹𝗲𝘀. ✨ Built in just 36 hours, Rune Wars reimagines e-sports as a social, active, and immersive experience. See demo video here: https://lnkd.in/etXdNdqk 🌍 Working with Snap Spectacles was super interesting. Some thoughts: It’s a device you can truly move in. Only 200g compared to the AVP, which clocks in at around 600g. Surprisingly sharp visuals, limited field of view—wearing Spectacles was like looking through a small square box, where only part of the interface is visible. Limited documentation, tons of potential. Things we developed always broke, which is expected with a new device. Battery life was as low and pairing devices for multiplayer was a nightmare, but we were able to achieve colocation in the end. 🌀 What does this mean for gaming? We’re on the edge of a transformation - imagine a world where every game is embedded in the environment around you rather than on a screen. In this world, video games are good for your physically, and they’re socially energising, and full of shared memories. There may even be e-sports in the Olympics, where people are moving around in digitally-augmented environments. 📝 A reflection I usually don’t write or share much about my projects, but I’m trying to do that more. I wrote a short article about what it was like for us to build Rune Wars using the Spectacles, and what the experience taught us about AR and gaming. If you’re interested, give it a read: https://lnkd.in/e2beKtjQ A massive shoutout to my wonderful team!! Our corner of the hackathon was probably pretty loud since we were just shooting orbs at each other the whole time. Steven Le, Rylan Pozniak Daniels, Jessica Sheng 🎮

This weekend, I had the privilege of helping organize Stanford University’s VR/AR hackathon, Immerse the Bay! It was an amazing experience working with Stanford XR's incredible team Emmanuel Corona, Karan Soin, Tenzin Chonzom, Vencent Vang, Zade Bosco Lobo and many others, and help lead the judging process and outreach. It was especially fantastic to see everyone from different XR communities across colleges worldwide through ICXR - Intercollegiate XR. Seeing some incredible projects come to life within 36 hours was truly inspiring. A massive thank you to all our sponsors, partners, volunteers and judges who made this event a success! Video credits: Cole Lee (Stanford XR)

Thrilled to share that my amazing team—comprising Mauricio Curiel, Nathan Tran, Wesley Wong, and myself—had a fun and incredible experience at StanfordXR’s Immerse the Bay 2024! We were honored to bring home two awards: the "Best Use of AI in XR" and "Best Use of Amazon Web Services (AWS)", as well as an honorable mention from Meta. Within 36 hours, we developed DreamScapes—an innovative sandbox app for prototyping world building in virtual reality by generating 3D meshes from voice commands in real-time. We developed a backend pipeline consisting of two open-source models from Hugging Face to transform text into 3D meshes in roughly 30 seconds! Note that one of the models was running locally on my M1 MacBook Air—imagine the speed on a more powerful machine! A massive thank you to the organizers, sponsors and judges for such a memorable experience! Meeting so many inspiring individuals in the XR field made this event truly special, and connecting with fellow hackers at the hackathon was a highlight. I’m excited about the new connections and opportunities this experience has opened up! A special thanks to David Gene Oh for letting me try out his new VR game, and to Jay Van Buren for sharing insights on impactful developments in the XR industry. Feel free to check out DreamScapes here if you're interested: https://lnkd.in/gA_AgZgi

The energy and quality of work from the Stanford University Immerse the Bay hackathon this weekend was second to none. With over 500 attendees there was a new wave of XR hacks, that showed off the power of Snap Inc. Spectacles for augmented reality experiences. Meta for Developers represented and a host of new use cases for VR and MR were in full effect. Developers waited in line to find out more about Niantic Spatial, and their new #NianticStudio and Scaniverse that allows you to scan the world! This video showcasing the amount of work and energy to pull this off could not be done with our amazing sponsors Amazon Web Services, (AWS), AWE, Immersal, #MarkIII, #Meta, Membit Inc., Niantic, Inc., NVIDIA, #RamenVR, ShapesXR #Shakeshack Thank you to all of you making this happen, please comment if I overlooked you, Emmanuel Corona, Karan Soin, Tenzin Chonzom, Vencent Vang, Zade Bosco Lobo Steven Le Sebastian Yang Brittan Heller, Parth Arora, Tanvi Agrawal, Stephanie Perrault, Giuse Pham, Sinchana Nama, Lauren Frazier Jay Van Buren Mauricio Curiel, Nathan Tran, Wesley Wong Banyar Shin, Kristani Alcantara, Sara (Alexx) Zaki, Danila Kharitonenkov, Zaid Ahmed, Ahmed Sharaf, Erika Herrera, Mohamed Abdelnaby Video credits: Cole Lee (Stanford XR)

🚀 The countdown is ON—just days away from Stanford’s biggest XR hackathon! This Friday and weekend, we’re bringing together the brightest minds, the boldest ideas, and the most incredible sponsors to make it all happen! 💥 🙌🔥 A HUGE shoutout to our incredible sponsors who are helping us bring #ImmerseTheBay to life: ShapesXR Niantic, Inc. NVIDIA Snap Inc. Meta Amazon Web Services (AWS) Immersal AWE Membit Inc. Ramen VR Mark III Systems Gabb Global With their support, we’re gearing up for a day packed with innovation, creativity, and challenges you won’t want to miss. 💡💻 Let’s get ready to #HackTheFuture and make this one for the books! 🏆 #TechInnovation #ThankYouSponsors #InnovationUnleashed

🚨 Reminder: Apply by 11:59pm (PT) TONIGHT for Immerse the Bay Hackathon! 🚨