There, he will watch the live keynote, collaborate with Apple engineers, and participate in hands-on tech labs.<\/p>\n
Liang says while Lake Tekapo (Takap\u014d), home of New Zealand\u2019s only professional research observatory, is renowned for its pristine dark skies, it\u2019s geographically or financially out of reach for many.<\/p>\n
To create his stargazing app, Liang travelled to Takap\u014d to capture the iconic Church of the Good Shepherd in 3D using his iPhone\u2019s Lidar (light detection and ranging) pulsed laser scanner.<\/p>\n
He then created a 12,500-particle galaxy utilising RealityKit, ARKit, and a custom-built Metal compute shader.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an immersive stargazing app,\u201d Liang said. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou can \u2018look\u2019 at objects, including the Moon and Matariki. You can drag them toward you by pinching then pulling your hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alex Liang’s latets app is devised to be used with Apple’s Vision Pro headset. Photo \/ Getty<\/p>\n
The Apple Vision Pro has yet to be released in New Zealand. Liang picked up his headset during a trip to Sydney.<\/p>\n
The app provides star lore, such as the significance of Matariki, in te reo M\u0101ori, with English translation.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t Liang\u2019s first time catching Apple\u2019s attention. He has been coding since the age of 5 \u2013 initially self-taught alongside guidance from his father \u2013 and was recognised as a standard challenge winner in previous years for his educational apps Little Planets and Make The Wish, both made for the iPhone and iPad.<\/p>\n
Make The Wish, which Liang donated to Auckland\u2019s Stardome Observatory, helps kids memorise our solar system\u2019s planets. <\/p>\n
It was developed with help from Professor Denis Vida from Canada\u2019s Global Meteor Network, which operates more than 1400 meteor cameras across 42 countries, after Liang attended an astronomy conference. <\/p>\n
The app uses machine learning (a form of AI) to predict the position of meteor showers, making it possible to photograph them with an iPhone rather than a specialised camera.<\/p>\n
Liang said the meteor tracking in Make The Wish and the constellations in his new app would have been impossible to create without the AI and spatial computing tools available today.<\/p>\n
Liang credits his father (a software developer, now working on the video side of generative AI) for encouraging him to watch Apple\u2019s WWDC 2020 livestream, including that year\u2019s student winners, for alerting him to the competition and the Swift programming language.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s hoping to meet Apple\u2019s outgoing chief executive Tim Cook and top product managers during his trip to Cupertino.<\/p>\n
Liang is now in his final year at Westlake, so what next? <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll probably take a gap year and travel the world going to conferences and tech events,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to work at Apple one day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald\u2019s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There, he will watch the live keynote, collaborate with Apple engineers, and participate in hands-on tech labs. Liang…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[41814,1443,2724,351,29652,51,179,231129,4596,33437,71,1437,106,111,43,139,69,6270,231128,5433,10949,199,5163,6202,102],"class_list":["post-454300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-17yearold","tag-about","tag-app","tag-apple","tag-apples","tag-auckland","tag-california","tag-coder","tag-competition","tag-cupertino","tag-from","tag-global","tag-head","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-office","tag-selftaught","tag-stage","tag-stargazing","tag-take","tag-teen","tag-wins","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}