
Ask HN: I am a back end developer that wants to dive into VR, where do I start? - nichochar
Hi, I&#x27;m a full stack back end developer that works in SF. I am neither junior nor senior (those don&#x27;t mean much really). I&#x27;ve got a lot of experience just working on back end server stuff, as well as some front end web stuff.<p>I am very self driven, and can follow any classes &#x2F; complete projects &#x2F; read papers. I am just not sure where exactly I should begin, but I do know that I want to join the VR industry, since I think it will be huge.<p>Any suggestions?
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vitovito
Depends, what part of it do you want to join?

Networking, analytics, multiplayer servers, etc. as a service is increasingly
big business in games.

Amazon released their Lumberjack 3D engine alongside their GameLift server
architecture and scaling platform:
[https://aws.amazon.com/gamelift/](https://aws.amazon.com/gamelift/)

Software Sandbox has their EpicData platform:
[http://swsb.io/](http://swsb.io/)

There's not a lot of value in making 3D engines these days, unless you're
working on a real niche experience that needs something custom, a one-off.

There could be a lot of value in working on input devices, like the Leap, or
Gest. But that requires really deep, low-level electrical and mechanical
engineering expertise, plus probably ergonomics, physiology, machine learning,
simulation, and who knows what else. You have to not only have the vision of a
future input device, but a long runway to even get to prototypes, and you're
behind Leap, Gest, the PlayStation Move, the Vive controllers, and Oculus
Touch.

But if you want to be making the actual VR experiences, I'm not sure there's a
way to do that without _actually making them._ All the companies in the space
right now are cranking away on content and figuring things out as they go, and
for all of them it's sometimes hard to tell what's a principle or maxim and
what's just a current generation-hardware limitation. No-one's publishing
original research on physiology and visual perception; everyone's too busy
doing.

There's nothing of substance to read. There are no worthwhile classes to take.
There are no projects of value to dissect.

I believe the only way forward today is to spend $1-3k on a high-end Windows
10 computer: [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/03/ars-system-guide-
vr-e...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/03/ars-system-guide-vr-edition-
cheap-vr-great-vr-and-optional-4k-craziness/) , buy the Rift ($600), the Vive
($800), or the HoloLens ($3000), and start learning Unity or Unreal until your
VR headset shows up.

What do you build? I have no idea. What do you want to do?

360 degree video is much more open right now than games VR is, per some talks
at GDC 2016 (going on right now). That requires a wide variety of skills, many
more than traditional videography or filmmaking, though, skills closer to
theatre production and improv and perhaps even ARGs.

The UI talks at GDC which emphasized the need to understand physiology and
attention and visual fields and focus as a first-order design principle (not
that it ever wasn't, but in VR it makes people sick if you don't) means that,
while in server command-line UIs you could get away with an awful or arcane
interface, in VR I suspect there will be a quick winnowing of any products
without substantial design effort exerted on them. As a back-end developer,
those probably aren't skills you have right now.

Perhaps the one saving grace everyone new to the field has right now is the
quote from one of the GDC talks, "It's very possible that you might be the
first person to encounter and solve a UI problem in VR."

But, VR right now isn't the web in 1999. Back then, you had HTML, you could
copy and paste text and something would appear. VR right now is the design
equivalent of the Homebrew Computer Club. Yes, use a 3D engine like Woz's
Apple I schematics and cobble something together, but it's not going to _do_
anything, it's not going to _be_ anything unless you have a vision for the
experiences you are working towards.

And then that experience can still only be shared by a tiny minority of people
who also have $1-3k Windows 10 computers plus an additional $6-800 of VR
hardware, or you have to get through Sony's licensing procedures to publish
for PlayStation VR (good luck with that).

In 2-3 years the field will be completely different, the next generation of
hardware will be out, and there will be paths forward, classes to take, books
to read. But VR today isn't a software problem, it's a hardware problem and a
content problem and a design problem.

If you don't have something you actually want to bring to life, I'm not sure
it's worth spending the money. You might want to wait.

