09/27/2017

12/26/2017

I spent the last month working with a group of fellow Udacity students and graduates on a virtual reality project.  A Teamworks group project done with Udacity’s VR Nanodegree program students and graduates. Note: If you haven’t heard about Udacity’s TEAMWORKS projects before, here’s a helpful link. http://www.udacityvr.com/teamworks The theme for this project was PATTERNS. Final Prototype By the end of the month, we had a fully functioning prototype of the game with 4 levels and the ability

10/25/2017

Recently I wrote about demoing TangramsVR for MAGWest. I wanted to share a couple of tips that really helped me during my demo or things that made me say “Oh, I wish I thought of that.” Make a demo video. I had made a couple of demo videos for TangramsVR prior to the event. I brought two computers with me the day of the event. One to run the demo on. This computer would show what the person wearing the headset was seeing when they were playing the game. When no one was playing the game, this

10/11/2017

Recently, I attended my first VRDC. I learned a lot. I took several pages of notes. In no particular order, here are my key takeaways from the event. To build a safe community in virtual reality, you not only have to think about what actions players can take in your experience, but how could players use those actions to be mean to others. In addition, women face a lot more challenges in VR. Just like in real life, they are more likely to be harassed in social VR experiences. We need to be

09/27/2017

I recently went to the Virtual Reality Developers Conference(VRDC). This was not my first tech conference, but was my first VRDC. There were a couple of things that stuck out to me. First, I found it a little jarring to not have a keynote presentation. I don’t know why exactly, but I find that I really enjoy conferences that start with a keynote. I think it helps to set the tone and build excitement for the conference. I think I’ve come to see it as the conference equivalent of team building —

09/20/2017

A couple of weeks ago, I was able to demo TangramsVR at the MAGWest festival. It was the first time showing off one of the games I made with complete strangers. I was terrified! What if they thought my game was no fun? What if they laughed at me or my game? Perhaps the worst was: “What if no one wanted to play my game?” Since I’m writing this after the event, you know that I’ve survived. I ended up learning a lot through the process. Demoing is really terrifying! I mentioned before I was

06/14/2017

Recently, I posted about going to a virtual reality design workshop with FusedVR and their 3 do’s for VR design. (Read the post here.) Let’s go over 3 things you should never do when designing for VR. 1. Accelerate naively. Simulator sickness is a real thing. Some people are more prone to it than others. You want to be purposeful with what you’re doing when involving player movement in VR. If you aren’t sure how to prevent people from getting sick in your apps, you can start with another