LifeInBetweenXR was our mixed-reality entry for MIT Reality Hack 2023. The experience “Life in Between” lets people see hyper-local environments around them using 3D mesh data of nearby buildings — not a flat map slice, but geometry tied to the real world. We leaned into public transit as the spine of daily life: map services and amenities along the bus or subway line you are already on, so detours and discoveries stay on-route and small businesses on those corridors get a fairer shot at . The team placed semifinalist in a field of 200+ teams.
Why “in between”
Cities compress huge amounts of history and utility into street-level detail that 2D maps glaze over. We wanted to strengthen sense of place and community mesh — who shares your line, your stop, your block — by making buildings and venues legible in 3D and by nudging discovery toward the routes people actually ride. The Devpost pitch also framed it as supporting community health: deeper interconnection among locals and clearer access to what exists near them, including in neighborhoods that are easy to skip on a generic map.
Use cases we called out
- Community building — shared context along shared corridors
- Tourism and local — explore the mesh above your line
- Educational and historical exploration — architecture and story of the built environment
- Real estate and property management — spatial literacy at neighborhood scale
What shipped in the demo
The submission described several concrete modes (names from our hackathon build); see Devpost for screenshots and video.
- Search — Wayfinding-style search with Google Maps API results, filtered toward locations near subway and bus stops and along the line you care about, so planning stays convenient to your commute.
- Bookmarks — Offline-leaning suggestions along your current line; 3D previews of places on that line; save favorites or “visit next” stops (demo focused on categories such as cafes and gyms near the rider's stop).
- MapExplore — Esri ArcGIS-driven 3D city visualization so riders can explore what sits above their route while they move through it — the “life between ” stations.
- Settings — Radius, geolocation, and experimental UI toggles to tune the experience.
- DolbySocialStream — Stream from your location and a message with a link to a Dolby live stream, aimed at lightweight location-based social connection.
Stack and hardware
Per our Devpost listing: Unity 2021.3.16f1, Android Studio, ARCore, Esri ArcGIS / 3D mapping SDK, Vive XR Elite passthrough mixed reality, and Dolby for the social streaming piece — tags on the page also highlighted Android, ARCore, Esri, Unity, and Vive XR.
Team
Sola Babatunde (Olusola Joshua Babatunde), Yanxiu Luo, Diego Saldivar, and Alif Jakir — cross-functional build across mobile MR, GIS, UX, and integration in a single weekend cycle.
What I contributed
On Devpost I summarized my focus as Unity, ArcGIS / spatial data, and design ideation — turning the “life between” concept into something we could demo: mesh-backed locality, transit-logical search, and a readable 3D exploration loop alongside teammates owning complementary surfaces of the app.
Links
- devpost.com/software/lifeinbetweenxr — full story, team roster, built-with tags, and Try it out (including GitHub entry points listed there)
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