
Beginning VR Development (2015) - thedayisntgray
https://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/misslivirose/Beginning-VR-Development
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ngokevin
Check out A-Frame ([https://aframe.io](https://aframe.io)) for a super simple
way to get started with VR in the browser. Even Liv who created this awesome
introduction (almost a year ago) has been repping more WebVR at recent
conference talks. Microsoft even recently announced intent to develop WebVR
APIs for Microsoft Edge.

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asenna
This looks pretty cool.

I have a question for the VR developers here. I'm interested in content for
architecture and a few other things, but is anyone seriously experimenting
with content other than games? Maybe it's a bit too early.

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misslivirose
Healthcare and education are two of the big use cases I'm seeing outside of
the gaming space. Architecture and real estate is another space that is seeing
traction. Right now a lot of energy is going into improving how people work
with 3D tooling (engines, 3D modeling and formats, etc) but I can say
concretely that I see quite a few non-gaming projects and companies working in
a number of verticals with VR.

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ngokevin
I'm also primarily seeing production use cases of Journalism, E-Commerce, Real
Estate for WebVR.

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AndrewKemendo
Interesting to see this coming from Microsoft as they are more firmly footed
in the AR space than VR. Note that they promote non MS products (Rift/Vive,
Unity/Unreal) - because they don't really have any.

I think this points to MS really embracing cross-platform friendliness.

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ryandamm
Right now, all tethered VR projects are arguably MS-dependent; there's no way
to run those headsets on OS X or Linux, as far as I know. So it's an ecosystem
thing.

And for sure, it seems that Microsoft is more interested in AR than VR. It's a
big company, though. They get to do more than one thing at a time.

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aerique
Oculus _used_ to provide drivers for Linux and OSX, up to v0.4 I think.
(Around this time Facebook and Microsoft became involved but I do not know
whether that had any influence.)

Also, since Valve makes SteamOS which is basically Linux one would hope they'd
make the Vive work on those platforms as well, but so far they have not :-(

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pault
The vive doesn't work on steamos? That is... surprising.

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Pfhreak
Glad to see the callout to QA your game with people who are outside of not
only your physical experience (different heights, ability, VR tolerance, etc.)
but also your personal experience (gender, life experiences, technology
expertise).

VR experiences can feel vastly more real than other games, and it can be
jarring to have a presentation of the self consistently out of line with your
own self image. Ensuring you present the player with either something
comfortable for them, or something _deliberately_ challenging (ie, if you are
going to make the character you inhabit male, it should be a deliberate choice
knowing that there may likely be significant discomfort for some of your
audience.)

Don't assume that a virtual body/archetype that you are comfortable with maps
to something that everyone is comfortable with!

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return0
Wondering what HN thinks about VR. Will it grow enough to be a big enough
market ? Till now it seems to be less than what it was hyped to be.

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anjneymidha
China is and will continue to be the largest consumer VR market for the near
term (1-2 yrs). By 2018, will likely have ~4M HTC Vives live in cyber cafes,
arcades and malls, and ~10M stand alone and mobile VR headsets across tier 1
cities. The rough math is about a $8B high end hardware market, $2B mid to low
end mobile VR hardware market, and $2-$3B in software services and game
revenues.

Almost all of the high quality, AAA games and apps will be produced by
US/European studios for this period, for consumption largely by Chinese
consumers.

(edited to answer your original question more directly)

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kev6168
Last month I saw a machine similar to this [1] at a trade show in Guangzhou, I
asked some kids after they finished playing, they all loved it very much.

[1]
[https://detail.1688.com/pic/536274760161.html?spm=0.0.0.0.J0...](https://detail.1688.com/pic/536274760161.html?spm=0.0.0.0.J09JvZ)

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thedayisntgray
I'm pretty sure that vr headset is the HTC Vive. Check it out:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=htc+vr&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=9...](https://www.google.com/search?q=htc+vr&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=966&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZ_pa7h6PPAhWEOSYKHdj7ADgQ_AUICSgE#imgrc=12ObzoDMeia3RM%3A)

~~~
kev6168
You are right, HTC Vive is actually mentioned in their product detail page.

The listed price is 68000 RMB, about 10K USD. I guess this includes the entire
headset, a high-end computer, and the platform itself. No idea how big the
margin would be. Might be good at this early stage.

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stinethebean
Liv also just published a guide to joining the Virtual Reality Industry. I
found it a fun and interesting read. Check it out at:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LLHGAX6/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LLHGAX6/)

