SoupVR
Learning Soup recipes through VR
Project_SoupVR
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SoupVR
February 2018
By Rick Heemskerk & Martijn Totté
Leiden University of Applied Sciences
Becoming a student is great fun, but it can also be kind of stressful. Suddenly, you're responsible for yourself, which includes exciting adulting skills like cooking food that isn't instant ramen. SoupVR was born out of that very real student experience. The app aims to help students take a small step towards self-care by offering simple, cheap, and healthy soup recipes, presented in a playful virtual reality environment. Because if you have to learn to cook, you might as well do it in VR.
SoupVR was developed in the second year of my bachelor's programme as part of a course focused on teaching users something through virtual reality. We chose cooking soup as our topic mostly because we were students ourselves, dealing with exactly the same "what shall I eat today" problem. The result is a VR cooking experience that guides users through making a soup, without taking itself too seriously.
Technically, the application was built using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with the A-Frame library, which is built on top of Three.js and WebGL. All 3D models were hand-made in a low-poly style using Blender (which is amusingly not an object you can find inside the app itself). We essentially built our own small framework that allowed objects to be picked up, interacted with, and assigned specific behaviours. The objects within the app also utilize a physics engine, so they can be flung around and placed on top of eachother (which isnt really needed for the functionality of the app but its still fun). Recipes are fetched via an API, which was my first real hands-on experience working with external data. The application runs in the browser and can be used with Google Cardboard, GearVR, desktop VR setups, or even without a headset.
This project was my first real introduction to 3D modelling and designing for VR. It is definitely not the most amazing app ever made, but I learned a lot, had fun building it, and I still have a soft spot for it. I hope the charm of this little student project shines through.
