The Hoosiers need a star. There are seconds left in the game, and a Hoosier victory seems like a longshot. Could a student be the next point guard, center or power forward to dribble down the court of Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall? Don a virtual reality headset and lace up those sneakers to find out.
Senior Catherine Onofrey, in partnership with the Mark Cuban Center for Sports Media and Technology, has built a VR game that allows the player to step out onto the court in Assembly Hall and shoot hoops in virtual space. This is the first virtual reality game since the center opened in October 2016, according to a Cuban Center press release.
The game is a short basketball experience built for the HTC Vive virtual reality headset that allows the user to put on the headset and physically walk around in virtual space.
“When you put it on and then take it off it’s like you are in a whole different world.” Onofrey said.
Onofrey is a senior studying informatics at IU. Onofrey interns with the Cuban Center and IU Athletics and works to develop athletics graphics and a VR game as part of her capstone project to graduate this May from the School of Informatics and Computing. Onofrey said she has always been interested in video games but became interested in game development when she took a class in graphic design that turned into 3-D virtual art pieces.
“All my guy friends all had Xboxes but I’ve always loved video games,” Onofrey said. “It is really cool to realize that games like “Call of Duty,” had so much work put into them and it makes you respect them more.”
Onofrey said she proposed the idea to the Cuban Center of having her help create an immersive IU Athletics experience to the Cuban Center. From there, the Assembly Hall basketball game idea was born.
Once equipped with the HTC Vive and controllers, players are dropped on to Branch McCracken Court inside Assembly Hall and given the ability to move around to pick up basketballs and shoot baskets. Players can also look around to find information and statistics on players from IU men’s and women’s basketball, according to the press release.
The entire project was streamlined thanks to the Cuban Center purchasing the necessary equipment for the project, but it still took her around three months to complete due to her working on it alone, Onofrey said.
“Really the hardest part was toward the end, spending a month to two months just coding and it not working and just keep trying different things,” Onofrey said.
The game was built using the software Maya to create the materials for the game, and Unity to craft the game mechanics, according to the press release.
The one issue that Onofrey never seemed to encounter was support for her game or a lack of people to test her game, she said. Onofrey also said she attributes this game to her resourcefulness of finding code online and help through other IU professors.
Onofrey’s future will hopefully involve more VR development, she said. Onofrey has a software development job lined up already with General Motors of Atlanta upon her graduation.
“I’ve been doing my research, and GM has a virtual reality department, developing and engineering cars, so I have been trying to see how I can get there,” Onofrey said. “I really do want to keep doing it.”
The game will remain with the Cuban Center for now but is available to download for free to any student that owns an HTC Vive, Onofrey said. The game can be found online now at iuhoosiers.com/documents/2017/3/30/IUBasketballVR.zip. Any feedback or assistance can be found through cubanctr@indiana.edu.
