Who here has half-finished VR projects?

Hi All

Hope you all get to finish your projects eventually. Feel free to send us builds if you want to promote your work on our website. We are always looking for new VR content.

All my VR things are incomplete. Whenever I feel like I'm approaching "finished", something new (a problem usually) always pops up. And once the VR thing is actually finished, I know that doesn't mean the work is done. Because then I have to build a website about this VR thing and figure out how this thing is going to reach the end user. Then I have to go around to all the internet places and "evangelize" my finished VR thing. Then once people are using my VR thing, I'm obligated to provide them support if something goes wrong, which something will, always. Then there's all the unknowns that I have no clue about. This is essentially building micro businesses (imho). I'm bootstrapping everything. I can't afford to delegate any of these tasks so I have to do everything myself.

This is just the perspective of an individual who was once a hobbyist and is now trying to build a career of some sort in VR.

"Jose" wrote:
All my VR things are incomplete. Whenever I feel like I'm approaching "finished", something new (a problem usually) always pops up. And once the VR thing is actually finished, I know that doesn't mean the work is done. Because then I have to build a website about this VR thing and figure out how this thing is going to reach the end user. Then I have to go around to all the internet places and "evangelize" my finished VR thing. Then once people are using my VR thing, I'm obligated to provide them support if something goes wrong, which something will, always. Then there's all the unknowns that I have no clue about. This is essentially building micro businesses (imho). I'm bootstrapping everything. I can't afford to delegate any of these tasks so I have to do everything myself.

This is just the perspective of an individual who was once a hobbyist and is now trying to build a career of some sort in VR.

This should be it's own topic. Never before has there been such real opportunity for people that aren't loaded to get into developing for something that people actually care about. It certainly is a micro business, to manage 8+ jobs for your new micro business plus the job that barely pays the bills is not easy. Hang in there. Anybody trying to do this with kids is amazing to me. The Rift release date is well off at least. That takes a little of the pressure off. When I first started developing I thought the consumer version would be out by now.

I have an environment that I designed based on the apocalyptic city assets from the Unity store if that counts :lol:

I have a cool story / plot line to go with it (in my mind at least), however, I got stuck with character animations; namely, mocap will save me a !@#% huge amount of time. For this, I'm waiting on my PrioVR suit. Some things I'm trying to solve:

- Real-body inverse kinematic and kinematic solver for playable avatars (rotation/positional animations based around the OVR cameras)

- Bilateral Symmetry based on IPD and player height. It won't be a 100% accurate representation of the player, however, it should be at least semi-close. I spoke with a couple of doctors, and unfortunately, they are not aware of any research papers dealing with accurate representation of the player in a virtual space based on only a couple of factors.

- Distance based mapping (bump and normal mapping that transforms into non-random tessellation). This is almost solved, however, it is too random and is fundamentally just a method to extrude. I need it to transform a billboard (ex: a leaf, or a blade of grass) into a 3D object based on how close the avatar is to it.

Here's my unfinished project. The physics are the star of this demo. Just Need to swap the programmer art with some real environments.

"rickdangerous" wrote:
I'm also kind of stuck in mid development of my game. I don't even have a DK1, so while I'm developing with rift in mind, it's really hard to imagine what the game will look like in the Rift. I have an early dk2 preorder so I really hope it will arrive soon.
If someone with a Rift wants to try it out and provide some feedback, please PM me.

I like the atmosphere but The camera movement may be too jerky for vR, That's the kind of thing that causes motion sickness.

"drash" wrote:
@jherico, I like the projects you've wanted to port. :)

Thanks. The celestia port mostly works actually, at least as far as rendering is concerned. The problem is the UI elements need to be re-written to take allow picking in the distorted view, and put information elements into the scene.

My first project was re-creating the 'Jump program' from the Matrix.
I had everything done and blocked out (Couple of skyscrapers/street, Morpheus' jump from one rooftop to the other) but in all honesty that just fizzled out as I got carried away with all the new Rift demos being released.

Second project was a holodeck style demo.
The idea was (bear with me!) that ol' Jean-Luc Picard (player) had had an accident and was confined to a wheelchair (just to match a seated Rift experience for the player) and just wanted a cup of tea. Unfortunately the replicator had also broken due to a memory leak and so some parts of it's instruction code had leaked into the holodeck programs.
You had to run a few different holodeck simulations and then explore them to find the missing code snippets.

Once they had all been retrieved you could then use the replicator to order a "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot."

• One of the holodeck simulations was a lush open environment to explore. (Not done)


• The second one was from the X-Men film where you played the role of Prof. X and had to use Cerebro to find one of the missing code snippets. (Cerebro environment prototyped)


• Third one was undecided.

I also wanted to use Voice Activated Commands for voice control for the holodeck computer and replicator.

The one thing putting me off seeing it through was the fact that Voice Activated Commands would have to be downloaded by everyone and it wasn't free.
And then a couple of months later on when I saw the quality of all the Star Trek demos released I just didn't bother!

I have finished an environment demo though. Just a personal one to try and get my girlfriend more involved - I've re-created the ground floor of her house to experience in VR! Still not happy with it though - I just can't get the lightmapping to look acceptable. I've done it so many times I've nearly worn out the 'bake' button in Unity!

Anyway......
The most frustrating thing for me personally is just how long it takes to create stuff (and lack of free time).
The best thing though is learning new skills or expanding existing ones!

I do feel a bit cheeky consuming all these wonderful demos without giving anything back myself. But if I'm not happy with it then I won't show it.
Although I was thinking of offering some mo-cap services to other devs once my PrioVR arrives - at least I can contribute something!

"basedeltazero" wrote:
Every now and then i get stuck working on my current projects, so rather than get frustrated i play often around with other stuff to see what works and what doesnt in VR, not so much unfinished projects, but im a bit of a tinkerer and have a lot of old non VR 3d models and scenes that i bring into unity to see how it looks, sometimes i buy things from the asset store to check out how other people structure their projects and i often throw a OVR camera in there for fun :)
Below is just a small selection of things ive converted for VR.

This is an unfinished Synagogue by Louis Khan who never got to build it before he died, i lovingly recreated it from blueprints. The way all the arches and structures line up and frame each other is quite fascinating.


A small Japanese house


Human body with X-Ray shaders, this looks quite cool in VR, coding it into something educational might take more time and effort than i have though.


Inside a cell, with this i wanted to split a music track up into individual elements, and apply a different instrument to each of the parts, so as you fly around the soundscape changes and feels alive.


A cave environment put together from the asset store, quite cool, but oh so claustrophobic.



Floating islands that you have to traverse with thin planks, not for people with a fear of heights.


An Egyptian scene


An island that i was doing early vegetation scattering on using rule based distribution (ie, if theres water, dont grow)


The solar system a was playing around with until a certain someone created a phenomenal demo.
(not looking at anyone in particular DRASH!)


A Roman bath, very simple but nice and atmospheric


A scifi spaceship from the asset store, would make a nice stage for a horror, except i seem to hate horror in the rift....


Ant sized prototype, this was quite cool actually despite the crappy models, looking up at giant clovers and house sized insects was awesome.




A medieval town with stuff from the asset store, very cool, but the thought of creating a story and NPC`s made me put this into the too hard basket


If anyone wants to see any of this, give me a shout, and i might do a build of it and put it up.

Woow man, looks great, would be awesome if we could walk around in some of those scenes from you in VR! Hope that you can manage to get any of those scenes work in the Rift!

@Drash - Love this topic! :D

@basedeltazero - Wow! Your half finished projects all look better than my finished ones. Amazing work.

Right now we're crunching on adding new items to Guided Meditation, so here are a few of ours that may never exist.

ROAR
Remember the chase scene from Jurassic Park? This was that. I had a bunch of fun figuring out how to add in realistic vehicle physics that we could control easily along a path. Once I solved the core technical problems though I became bored with the chase concept.





Poolside Villa
After seeing Red Frame we wanted to make a realistic environment too. This is modeled off of a client floor plan, so it was fun recreating a real space and testing IBL for the first time.





Lullaby
First person baby! Then we realized Among the Sleep was coming out...and it looked awesome. So no FPSBABYMMORPG.



Fire Engine Five
Save lives and brave man's worst enemy: fire. As a firefighter you'd explore the house as it collapsed and see if you could save everyone in time. Most of the demos above are fun little experiences, but this was an exploration of an actual game. Want to play this, just don't want to make it.



Escher
Walk around impossible spaces. Working on the gravity piece when I'm bored. No screens here as I may release even if just a room or two.

Hands
A 1-minute experience using the LEAP built specifically to stir emotion. We still may do this one, so no screenshots yet, but damn if LEAP isn't finicky still.