>> I'm super excited for today's code stories,
we're talking with Zaid Zaim,
a Microsoft MVP who recently emigrated from Syria to Germany.
He's a student and he's bringing
history to life. Let's see what he has to say.
[MUSIC]
Hello, Zaid,
it's so good to see you my friend,
for those who don't know you want you
to tell us a little bit about yourself.
>> Hello Seth. Thank you very much for
having me in this code story episode.
My name is Zaid Zaim.
I am a Microsoft MVP for Windows development in full time.
I'm a student. In my spare time,
I also conduct workshops on mixed reality.
I'm originally from Damascus,
it's the capital of Syria.
[MUSIC] I needed to
move to Germany to free my country because of the war in Syria,
that is since 2011.
Many cities in Syria are under the UNESCO World territory site,
so ancient cities that we need to keep alive.
[MUSIC]
>> You actually built a mixed reality for cultural heritage app.
Tell us about that.
>> When I was a child, I had the chance
to visit the city of Palmyra and
uncensored Roman site that dates back around 4000 years.
This was a very inspiring moment to me.
When I came to Germany,
I thought then how can I merge my personal experience with
the newly learned skills in mixed reality and
HoloLens to create historical awareness,
to visualize the historical monuments
and through the different interaction possibilities,
the viewer at least can say,
we want to keep these monuments alive.
>> You've told me a lot of amazing things.
I feel like I want to see how this actually works.
Can you show us a little bit of how the software works.
>> Here we have the HoloLens,
the mixed reality device by Microsoft.
It has different 3D sensors,
that sensors is on the surface that it can capture the real world,
and mixed reality means to
integrate the digital content into the physical world.
I'm here to share my screen.
Here I already opened in Unity 3D Project.
Unity allows you to develop for virtual reality,
augmented reality and mixed reality.
We have here on the left side,
we have the hierarchy that contains all objects that
actually what we want to see later in our application.
For the setup of the project,
we already imported
the mixed reality open source project by Microsoft.
The Mixed Reality Toolkit allows developers,
designers and tech interested people to get
easily onboarded for developing
simple apps for mixed reality and the HoloLens.
When we integrated the Mixed Reality Toolkit,
we can see the different components that
we can control and adjust.
We have here, for example the camera,
when we enable it and we get
a virtual representation of the user in unity.
Here we have the input system.
We have spatial awareness.
If we activate this, then
the HoloLens could scan the real world and
then allows us to project different 3D content,
integrating them into the physical world.
Here the mixed reality play space,
it's represented as a camera.
This represents the user's vision in the project.
>> Basically, the toolkit integrates with unity so that you
can interact with the mixed reality HoloLens.
That's how it plugs together,
and then you build on top of that.
>> Yeah exactly. Here,
actually the app is working.
When we press on space,
you see here then directly the simulated hand in 3D.
That then represents actually your human hand.
Here we have two panels.
When we interact with the first button,
we get our globe referencing and on Syria,
then we get a 3D model of the Syrian map.
Here we can activate the ancient Palmyra.
We got a 3D representation of the map
and then the different monuments here we see the arc of triumph,
the Temple of Baalshamin.
when we gaze on the monuments,
you click on the 3D object,
then it does something else.
Here, for example,
there is a simple script attached to it that makes the monument
float and then makes then to the end user clear and interactive.
Then actually, when you developed
all the interactions that you want to have and would be now,
for example, the next step,
stop the play mode and then go to build settings,
choose Universal Windows Platform and then build
the solution and later on
deploy the Visual Studio solution to the HoloLens.
>> That's really cool. I put
the HoloLens on and basically these maps
overlay reality and you can go ahead and pick
the things that you want to actually do. Is that right?
>> Exactly. Actually, we're here.
We turn it on. We have the application running.
Then now the cool part,
we saw for example, the arc of triumph,
also the HoloLens two has
hand-tracking technology that allows you to interact with
the monuments and then place them anywhere
as if you are interacting with real objects.
We have a timeline.
When you interact with this timeline,
you'll see the evolution of the monument.
From the construction till it's destruction and the war in Syria.
[MUSIC]
Another aspect in
here is that you can scale the monument,
make it, for example,
so big that it fits into your room.
In this case, you can go inside of the monument,
have a look at the different ornaments and
the different decorations that we built in that reflect
the beauty of the monument and could give the user,
for example a feeling of beauty.
[MUSIC]
When we jump into the Temple of
Baalshamin another monument that we visualize,
we are able again to scale the monument,
view it from different perspectives.
You can interact with it, tactically,
for example, get a feeling how it is,
and also having a deep impression
on the beauty of the monuments by having a look on
the ornaments and the decorations that also tells
you the history of this wonderful artifact.
Then we have, for example,
another button that shows you that you can interact
with that then you can create the state of the destruction.
Virtually, you can then destroy it,
and then you will be an active person bringing
this monument back to life and in terms of grabbing, for example,
interacting with stones and really
positioning them in their original places
[MUSIC] The other one is,
for example, you can get a story told from a person,
for example, from Palmyra.
For simulating this, I created
a 3D character of myself and here the idea is
we want in the future to
implement people as 3D characters from Palmyra.
You could tell the history about
these monuments and tell us about their experience,
what they were feeling, for example,
when they visited this particular monument.
Because such experiences we cannot
find in any Wikipedia or any article in the internet,
or maybe in a book,
but having this ready effect,
having this similar to a conversation,
this is also another point of interaction and keeping
the history of Palmyra or other sites alive.
[MUSIC]
>> This is so cool for me because I love history and be able to to
actually see and get a sense of
volume and a place it's actually really cool.
How long have you been working on this?
Tell us about the experience you had to get to this place.
>> In 2017, I joined ReDI School of Digital Integration.
This is an NGO in Berlin that supports newcomers and refugees,
learn quality skills in tech and get
the possibility to work in the I.T.
job market. I had the chance to meet Mathias.
He's a Cloud solution architect at Microsoft,
who invited me to join him with
other ReDI students going to the IoT Hackathon in Berlin in 2018.
At that time, I really did not knew what is HoloLens,
so I had the chance to work with a team of experts who
are really into the tech of mixed reality and the HoloLens.
Having a look around our galaxy directly in your living room,
this is actually really awesome and at
the beginning I was not able to imagine this.
This was to me the big game changer in terms of networking,
meeting new people and learn
the first steps how to develop a first app for the HoloLens.
>> Do you have any words to say to people who are like,
wow this is so cool,
I want to do mixed reality.
I want to learn how to use the MLTK. Any final words for that?
>> If you have an idea, really go with it,
tackle it and just give it a try.
This way you can bring your ideas,
your dreams to life by, for example,
having a look on the Microsoft Learn platform,
going through the different tutorials
on the HoloLens, on mixed reality,
and always go to Hackathons,
to meetups and connect with others.
>> I'm a huge fan of this work.
If people want to contribute
or want to join the team, is that possible?
>> People were joining us on this voluntarily
and also joining from the meetups and the talks.
I've been presenting the project and
the project is now open source on GitHub.
Everyone who was interested in this topic,
cultural heritage and mixed reality,
HoloLens is more than welcome to join us on this journey.
>> What's next for you and what's next for the project?
>> I hope to create a platform
bringing cultural heritage in mixed reality
back to life and motivating people more
about mixed reality and HoloLens.
>> Zaid, it's been a pleasure for me to learn from you.
Thank you so much for your time.
>> Thank you very much for having me Seth.
>> By developing a mixed reality prototype,
Zaid has found a way to bring his past into
his present and actually make a future with mixed reality.
This is pretty amazing.
Being able to understand technology
to be able to know and see actual history.
I'm inspired by it.
Hopefully, you're inspired to to see what you can come
up with to make the world a better place like Zaid has.
Thank you for watching, and this has been another code stories.
[MUSIC]