
VR Resources - Impossible
http://facebook.design/vr
======
larrik
"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?

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

~~~
larrik
That makes sense.

------
mortenjorck
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/](https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/new-
features/)). HMD support would make this a viable, standalone VR sphere-
prototyping tool.

------
hrayr
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.

~~~
kakarot
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.

~~~
cma
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.

~~~
kakarot
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?

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

------
brilliantcode
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.

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

~~~
madeofpalk
VR and AR _might_ by the future of HCI. Facebook is making a bet.

------
cr0sh
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?

~~~
Impossible
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.

~~~
andybak
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.

------
debt
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.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
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.

