Elias Bormann - Portfolio

I'm Elias Bormann, a student at Hochschule Darmstadt studying Expanded Realities. What started as a hobby is now on its way to becoming my profession.

With a strong interest in coding, new and upcoming technology, and graphics programming, I'm constantly exploring and pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

My Work

XRAI Story Bubbles ▼

An award-winning mixed reality app where you battle an AI in improv storytelling using real-world objects.

Meta Quest 3 Shaders & VFX Hackathon Winner

General Description

3rd Place / Runner-up in the "XR with AI" category at the XRAI Hackathon in Cologne (~60 participants).
A collaborative project built during a 3-day hackathon where I joined 3 strangers to create a fully functional XR experience.
Uses Quest 3 passthrough to detect real-world objects, which become prompt inputs. The team integrated Grok, ElevenLabs, and image generators to create the AI opponent.
Features floating "story bubbles"—visual windows generated by AI that depict the narrative in real-time.

My Contributions & Tech

Visuals & Shaders: Created the custom "Bubble" shader and a specialized 3D displacement shader that uses AI-generated depth maps to bring 2D story images to life.
Object Detection: Implemented the spatial awareness features to scan the room and identify physical objects for gameplay.
Unity Development: Focused on the core XR interactions and visual implementation, while teammates handled the AI API connections and UI design.

Playthrough & Demo

Certificate (Coming Soon)

Hackathon Team Photo