VR Resources | Hacker News Reader

VR Resources

facebook.design

116 pointsImpossible31 comments

"Subject to your compliance with these terms, you may use the Facebook Design Resources solely for creating mock-ups, including displaying such mock-ups in digital or print format. The Facebook Design Resources may not be embedded in any software programs or other products without express written permission."

Cool stuff, but not super practical?

It's practical for designers, which is what these resources were designed for.

That makes sense.

The Sketch VR template and its accompanying Unity project, which projects the Sketch document onto the inside of a 14-meter sphere, is a VR prototyping workflow that never occurred to me.

I wonder if Serif, makers of Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo, would want to expand in this direction: Photo (Serif's Photoshop usurper) just added a very interesting real-time 360° view (https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/new-features/). HMD support would make this a viable, standalone VR sphere-prototyping tool.

How practical is it to get into programming for VR for cost sensitive developers? I feel like this space will not blow up until the tools and resources become fairly accessible for the common developer.

About $800 for either major platform, plus a PC that can push the pixels for it (probably another grand or so). The Vive comes with touch controllers and room-scale stuff, which is why its list price is about $799; the Rift is $599 but the touch controllers and the second camera necessary for hand tracking are a $200 bundle. I would not recommend a Rift; right now room-scale (diagonal placement) is experimental for the Rift whereas it's standard for the Vive, and coupled with Oculus's founder being something of a dirtbag I'd recommend a Vive on both technical and not-feeling-icky grounds.

The Rift is better than the Vive on probably every account except large room scale, which is irrelevant to most people, and your logic is to get the Vive? You sound like a misguided technology zealot to me.

I have had double-digit hours of hands-on time with both systems including a Rift with Touch support. I have used them in a minimum-scale Vive space and something close to its maximum--obviously less for the Rift, but I wasn't even holding that against the Rift in the first place. My main beef with it is that tracking with the two-camera Rift setup is messed up. The two-camera diagonal setup is not really working and while the three-camera one is better (about on-par with the two-lighthouse Vive solution), it involves long USB runs that can't be worked around and costs more than the Vive does. While it is certainly possible that the Rift improves its tracking, I am fairly confident that the Vive lighthouse solution is going to be a better one long-term, too, and will improve more rapidly than the Rift's. Internal positioning intuitively makes a lot more sense to me.

Meanwhile, the Touch controllers do have some nice features that the Vive controllers don't--and, realistically, few developers are going to target those features as more than throw-ins because the Vive doesn't have them (to say nothing of PS VR, which seems to be a strong entrant as well but I don't advise it because PS4 development ain't exactly cheap to get into). You are buying into a platform, but developers are going to be targeting all of them; both as a gamer and as a developer I would want the median setup until and unless the Rift becomes the only choice, not one of the choices.

But, sure. I'm "misguided". I'm a technology zealot (not somebody who, like, looks at markets or anything, or somebody who's used all this gear). You sure I just didn't rustle your jimmies because you like the Rift? I mean, don't get me wrong: it's fine, it'll get most if not all of the same games, and while its FOV feels shrunken a bit to me it's even a little more comfy than the Vive is (though PS VR is more comfortable than both). But if you want to develop on it, it would be my third choice, behind "buy a PS VR dev kit" and the Vive, in that order--and I don't know many hobbyists who can score a PS VR dev kit, so the Vive's the only option.

And now I have burned three paragraphs repeating what 'moron4hire said in the Iribe thread to disabuse you of your notions, but I don't take kindly to shots at my credibility from platform warriors. Haveaniceday.

> You are buying into a platform, but developers are going to be targeting all of them

Given that Oculus finances games while HTC/Valve doesn't do it that sounds dubious to me.

edit: Not impossible, just dubious. Most game devs at the moment only do VR if someone pays them as VR doesn't pay for itself, not even with all three platforms.

I am not aware of any games not built by Oculus that are permanent Rift exclusives (and those will probably be hacked to work on the Vive anyway and the developers know about it). They'll all end up everywhere eventually. This is going to be commoditized, and just like PC games tend to settle to the level of the consoles in the market around the time of release, that doesn't leave a lot of space for the extra toys of any one. For a similar situation: how many multi-platform games retooled to use the SIXAXIS controller in more than a perfunctory way? (Not many.)

If you're getting started on a budget, it's perfectly valid to start with the phone you have and a Google Cardboard.

The high-end systems are significantly different, but there are a lot of UI concerns that you can still address with Google Cardboard.

That said, a Vive plus a good enough PC should run you no more than $1750 today, and it will go down pretty quickly.

I also recommend the Vive as the most viable.

If you prefer sit-down VR and don't see the potential in room-scale VR, then I would recommend the Fove.

It has eye-tracking which allows for focusing rendering resources around your gaze as well as some cool interaction and less stress on your neck.

John Carmack was sniped by Oculus while back to figure out things like inside-out roomscale, specifically with the Gear VR, so you might be keen to keep up with those developments.

Gear VR is fairly affordable if you have a compatible phone and will hopefully stay that way once they implement Carmack's reverse tracking.

Avoid GearVR and go with Daydream if you can manage it: GearVR used Android to bootstrap itself but locks things down similarly to Amazon Fire phones. Just go with Daydream, it is "real" Android and avoids adding another locked down system to our lives--you don't have to get special keys from Facebook to send out your app like you do with GearVR, and third party stores are allowed and practical.

Thanks for sharing. I didn't realize that Facebook required developer keys for the Gear VR.

I don't support Oculus because of the Facebook buyout, but I am a Carmack fanboy and I hope that he is pushing for GearVR / Oculus to make his methods for inside-out tracking publicly available.

Do you have Daydream HMD and if so, what is your experience with it?

What do you mean by Vive being most viable? The Rift has sold as much as the Vive works better than the Vive for everything but large room scale (which is irrelevant to most users).

It has not. According to Steam statistics there are almost 2 times more Vive users.

Rift is lighter and looks better but that's about it. Vive controllers are better and it has much larger game selection.

"Room scale VR" is not irrelevant. Room scale VR basically is THE VR. Seated experiences are completely useless except for car/plane sims.

Also Vive is pushing the open source mentality and whole VR technology forward, while Facebook is trying to create exclusives, DRM and other shit with the Rift.

Pretty accessible on the WebVR space if you are interested in getting in early. Works on Rift/Vive/GearVR/smartphones/desktops/laptops across multiple browsers. An accessible tool includes https://aframe.io

I also work on a framework that is also cross-platform: https://www.primrosevr.com

I am currently employed as a vr developer and started learning using my galaxy S6 and a Gear VR. You're not going to be able to learn many important aspects of building a true immersive vr experience because of the lack of real graphics horsepower and motion controls, but mobile vr is a good way to start learning and the experience of building something in code and seeing it in VR around you is really incredible. Daydream is a really solid platform and there's absolutely a space to develop just for mobile vr, but even if you are only interested in "real" vr mobile is a great low budget way to get your feet wet.

The thing that gets me most excited about VR is how ready everyone will be for AR.

I wonder what the underlying assumption is here from Facebook. Is it the notion that

1) VR headsets will get comfortable

2) VR users will want to connect with friends

3) VR will get killer applications and FB wants to be a platform like it did with Games/Spam?

4) Returns will be realized before FB becomes insolvent?

All in all, facebook gets a low score for me because people are starting to realize the toxic effects of being "connected". More people I talk to, the more I see "off grid" peeps like me. Great platform for narcissist to maximize their attention as trolls are to Youtube comments and Reddit. Even people who are on FB are not the same as 8 years ago, sporadically checking. The upcoming demographic seems to be more geared towards Snapchat-esque mediums.

Secondly, I'm concerned by the volatile landscape of "social" apps. FB forked out so much money for it's past aquisitions such as Whatsapp, Instagram...okay I get it buy out the competition to avoid becoming MySpace... but Oculus Rift purchase was the most troubling one of all because it showed that FB is becoming increasingly anxious about it's future relevance by betting on extremely early poorly adopted tech with questionable prospects (imo VR will fail for the same reasons it did in 90s, people don't want to spend long time or spend doing things they can do on a normal computer). This anxiety is further fueled by Zuckerberg's race to China while failing to see that WeChat, Baidu, Snapchat, Uber all have one thing in common: Poor adoption by target demographic when strong incumbents dominate the market.

If I was a FB shareholder, I would be asking, how the heck are all these experiments which cost billions of dollars ever going to generate return before the low interest rate capital disappears with a strengthening dollar and looming protectionism? This VR resource page communicates and confirms my suspicions.

FB's VR resources is interesting of course as a fun dev toy, but seeing how Google spend so much money chasing after "Xperimental out there" ideas and still hasn't seen ROI, it's worrying to see a company that isn't printing money spend investors cash so carelessly.

VR and AR are the future of HCI. Facebook wants their stock to continue going up and Mark wants to continue being relevant.

VR and AR might by the future of HCI. Facebook is making a bet.

VR Resources? This?

I have an archive of several gig of information, papers, code, software, images - you name it - that stretches back detailing VR to at lease the Ivan Sutherland "Sword of Damocles" era (and actually, before that even - plenty of stuff came before his demos that hinted at things - Hugo Gernsback had more than a few covers of his pulp-scifi mags that covered VR and AR ideas in the 1920s and 30s, for instance).

Do most people think that VR is a totally new thing?

Sharing is caring. :)

Is your comment supposed to do more than show how much you know about VR?

This is basically a brain dump of information some people gleaned from working with modern VR. I don't see it billing itself as _the_ fundamental VR resource.

Post your stuff and link away. The world is moving away from isolated information silos and that's ok!

I think I originally submitted it as "Facebook Design: VR Resources", but the mods did the HN thing where the title changes to directly match the original. This is in no way meant to be a general VR knowledge dump, it's specifically a set of resources that Facebook has produced targeted at designers that traditionally work on web and mobile design and are new to VR UI.

The most interesting thing on the site is the publicly available version of the VR hand models used in the Oculus home UI and all of their games and demos, which were previously only available if you had a relationship with Oculus developer relations.

I hate those title changes. Some page titles are completely useless when taken out of context. I really don't understand the zealous application of that guideline on HN.

this is all cool but vr design is more game design than app design.

why take a bunch of app product designers and make them do vr apps?

doesn't make sense. get game designers to do it.

Completely disagree. Half of VR experiences aren't games: Tilt Brush (3D Photoshop/painting), Medium (3D Z-Brush/sculpting), Google Earth VR (3D map), and so many more which aren't concerned with "game design" or "playability". They're all used via a combination of physical and digital interactions, requiring a mix of UI/UX and industrial design insights.

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