Overview

A Mixed Reality Advent Calendar that transforms your own physical space into a living, evolving Christmas story.

• You scan your room once — walls, tables, furniture, windows, and floors become the stage
• Every day until Christmas, a new surprise appears somewhere in your real room: a glowing ornament under your desk, a fairy fluttering by the window, or a snowflake falling from your ceiling
• These surprises include interactive activities (lighting candles, decorating a virtual tree) and story fragments that build toward a heartfelt finale on Christmas Day.

It’s a real-world narrative unfolding inside your personal environment.

Team Roles

Seonjeong Park : Ideation, app development using Unity, spatial interaction design, UI/UX design
Jiyeon Baek: Ideation, 3D modeling, and animation using Blender.

Development Background and Purpose

For centuries, advent calendars have helped people slow down and savor each day before Christmas. But today, our lives are fast, digital, and flat - we scroll, we swipe, we forget. The MR Advent Calendar brings back that lost sense of presence. It invites you to pause, move, and discover. Not on a screen, but in your world.
It’s not about gifts. It’s about wonder. It’s not about the virtual. It’s about the feeling that magic is here, in your room.

1. MR transforms passive anticipation into active anticipation

• Traditional advent calendars are passive. You open a door, take something out. MR makes anticipation embodied. You move, reach, bend, light, decorate, affect your own space.
• The surprise isn’t delivered to you; it’s discovered by you. It’s about presence and participation, not consumption.

2. MR makes your personal environment part of the story

• Each user’s space becomes the narrative setting - walls, tables, windows, furniture are mapped and used different for everyone.
• Using MR, every person’s Christmas story feels unique and contextual. The magic happens in your home. MR makes your room part of the story - spatial, embodied, and emotionally real.

A chocolate calendar gives you something to eat. A digital calendar gives you something to see. But a Mixed Reality calendar gives you something to live inside - it turns your room into the story itself.

Development Environment and Tools

Platform : Meta Quest
Game Engine : Unity3D
Programming Language : C#
Gen AI : Whisper API, OpenAI API, ElevenLabs Plugins : Meta SDK
Collaboration Tool : GitHub

System Architecture and Key Features

1. Meta SDK Integration
Utilises Meta SDK to to build an immersive MR environment with advanced hand-tracking for gestures, grabbing, snapping, and natural spatial interactions.

2. MR Integration
Objects dynamically spawn in the user’s real environment. On the floor, walls, ceiling, or furniture, creating a spatially grounded story that unfolds inside their room. This includes environmental transformations such as revealing a night sky above the ceiling, placing fireplaces on walls, or summoning snowfall from overhead.

3. Spatial Anchor
All virtual objects remain exactly where the user places them. Trees, fireplaces, ornaments, and surprises persist across sessions, allowing the MR world to grow and evolve each day.

4. AI Integration
Combines several AI tools to deliver a personalized narrative experience:

• Whisper API for hands-free, natural voice input
• GPT for generating daily narrative responses, wish interpretation, and custom image generation
• ElevenLabs for generating Santa’s voice that reads the user’s Christmas wish on Day 25

Together, these systems create a deeply personal and emotionally resonant AI finale.

5. Save System
Progress is automatically saved each day, unlocked surprises, placed objects, user interactions, and the Christmas wish are all preserved, ensuring continuity and a cohesive 25-day experience.

Core Features

1. Daily MR Surprises
Each day reveals a new interactive moment in your real room—trees growing, snow falling from the ceiling, a fireplace on your wall, candles floating above you, and more.

2. Personalized AI Finale
On Day 1, you whisper your Christmas wish. On Christmas Day, AI transforms it into a personalized “gift,” spoken by Santa and visualized as a custom illustration or scene.

3. 25 Micro-Activities
Light candles, decorate a tree, trigger snowfall with gestures, snap socks onto a fireplace—each day encourages movement and play.

4. Persistence with Spatial Anchors
All objects stay where you placed them. Your wish, progress, and unlocked days are saved so the world grows with you.