Posted December 07, 2021 by middlepattern
Well, considering I've only been programming for a year now, jumping into 'VR' would seem like a bit of a silly move. I can barely get things to work in 2D let alone 3D. Throw 'VR' on top of that and you've got a recipe for a disaster. That said, I kinda picked all this stuff up in the first place because I wanted to make some VR long ago. So when I saw the 'Digital Environment Jam', which had the unique premise of making only the environment - no gameplay loop or other game mechanics required - I was intrigued.
The learning curve was steep, 3D is not like 2D at all. So most of my time was spent faffing about getting very very very simple things in VR to work (and even with that I found my controls were backwards when using VR controllers 🤣🤣🤣). The environment took quite a few tries too. I was just trying so hard to make something look half decent. I'm pretty sure any seasoned 3D modeler could of built what I built in about, oh, 30 seconds? Haha.
That said, I'm actually kinda happy with what I made and what I learned. I'm a bit more interested again in VR now that the 'metaverse' is being pushed on us so hard. It could be a colossal failure, but on the chance it isn't it's somewhat interesting to think about creating virtual spaces with actual intent. That is, whether it replicates reality or not, for the space to have a purpose. There will obviously be spaces for games, work meetings, etc. But I really do wonder if you could have a space for reflection or mourning or memory - not something you'd go to all the time.
A few other random thoughts about the metaverse when I was building this:
-in the Matrix, the white void where Morpheus does lots of his proselytizing to Neo is kinda the standard 'new document' space. When you're seeing it in the theater it's this stunning moment to see no background and this sharp contrast of characters having dialogue. But in our iteration of VR it would be a completely lazy and uninteresting VR Chat space. It kinda cracked me up when I thought of making that someone's first introduction to VR. Like opening notepad and showing it to someone as an example of what computers can do.
-Wouldn't it be far more efficient if in the Star Trek world everyone had their own mini holodeck? They'd have a 360 view of whatever displays they needed, they could communicate with anyone they wanted in the network...Oh wait that kinda sounds like the Borg.