Overview

Network Nightmares is a Virtual Reality game for Google Cardboard that turns the frustrating work of network debugging into an immersive detective experience. My teammates and I built it for the Triangle VR Hackathon, a state-level event with over 90 participants judged on design, methodology, execution, and creativity.

Ideas

Networks are abstract and hard to visualize. We wanted to use VR to make that abstraction tangible and give programmers a new way to think about security problems. Playing as a Security Network Analyst, the player moves through a branching digital world of nodes. One node is a virus, silently infecting every data transfer that passes through it. The player must identify and isolate it before the entire network collapses.

Implementations

We designed the visualization of nodes and links that represent networks. The "virus" travelled from node to node with a set of rules we designed. The node that had been visited was marked with different colors to indicate the order of the visits. The player had to look around and make judgments to find the virus. We developed most of the project in Unity with C# and assets in Maya and Illustrator. I mainly worked on the spatial audio as another hint to the players.

Reflections

This was my first experience with VR and Hackathons. I immediately loved the dynamic of Hackathons and the magic of VR. I enjoyed the intensive thinking and making process. It was very stressful, challenging, yet fun. It might sound cheesy, but I did struggle with perfectionism. It was very refreshing for me to try my best and to see what I could do within 48 hours without worrying too much about the outcomes.