SpyreStudios

Web Design and Development Magazine

  • Design
  • Showcase
  • Inspirational
  • Tutorials
  • CSS
  • Resources
  • Tools
  • UX
  • More
    • Mobile
    • Usability
    • HTML5
    • Business
    • Freebies
    • Giveaway
    • About SpyreStudios
    • Advertise On SpyreStudios
    • Get In Touch With Us

Transitioning From Web to VR Development

July 25, 2017 by Spyre Studios

vr development

Web content has significantly expanded over the past 20+ years. Online media was limited only to text and pictures. This eventually gave way to music and video and, over time, online content has expanded to include every sort of media imaginable. Case in point, one of the hottest online trends of 2017 is online virtual reality, or WebVR.

If you are an online content developer now is the time to expand your skillsets to include VR development. Major players in the WebVR game include Samsung, Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla. Even smaller programmers and developers are creating innovative interfaces and WebVR experiments. It has never been easier or more opportune to learn VR development.

The following article will go through some of the important steps to advancing your online VR content creation skills on your own. These five steps will explore where to learn, what course to focus on, discuss the skills you may already have and how your knowledge from these fields can help you in your WebVR development, and how to maximize your educational expansion experience.

1. Read As Much As You Can

As mentioned previously, there are many different companies involved in developing WebVR. Oculus Rift uses Chromium (an experimental open-source version of Chrome) or Firefox Nightly for programming their content. Samsung VR Gear uses the Samsung Internet Browser. That means there are three distinct browsers that your coding will have to account for if you want to make sure your content is accessible to everyone that comes across your VR site.

In order to make sure, you’ll have to read everything you can find on the differences between the three systems and how those changes may affect your content. You’re going to pour through sites designed to guide you through the ins and outs of Google’s, Firefox’s, and Samsung’s code. Go through forums where people discuss the various issues and resolutions they have discovered in their uses of the system so that you can avoid the learning curve that others have already trail-blazed for you. Register accounts on various VR-related forums and introduce yourself – if you have any specific questions, forum members will answer them or help you through problems you encounter in your code. You can use forums to connect with other like-minded people and, who knows, maybe find some freelancing opportunities.

2. Learn Unity & Practice, Practice, Practice

vr development

Source

Unity is a diverse and evolving programming language for developing video and video game content online that has been growing since its’ debut in 2005. They have been coding for 3D since 2015 and their engine is part of the Nintendo 3DS. And they are everywhere else that runs graphics online: Android, iPhone, Xbox and Playstation, and every VR headset to date. If you want to write WebVR content, learning Unity is a must.

Thankfully, Unity 3D makes it easy by offering samples for beginners in writing Unity, which you can do in a variety of programming languages, and various other tools to learn or sharpen your skills. You should also take the time to learn Boo, Unity’s preferred scripting method. Like any other skill, getting good at writing in Unity takes time, practice and, most importantly, curiosity.

3. Brush Up Your 3D Modeling, Animation, and Game Programming Skills

Here’s the shortcoming with Unity (in iteration 5.6.1 as of the writing of this article) and WebVR: it still isn’t natively handling WebVR content, though Unity Technology programmer Jonas Echterhoff predicts that such ability will become available in the 5.6(.x) iteration. That means that for now you’re going to have to build your content in other programs and import your finished work into Unity, so that it’ll run online.

There are various ways to accomplish this, and you may find a way that you prefer, but this Mozilla hack has an example on how to do conversion of indie content into WebVR players.

The bright side of the system is that the tools that you are already familiar with and the skills that you have already developed can be utilized in developing your WebVR content. That means that you should spend some time learning or brushing up on your code for 3D modeling, animation, and game programming because those skills will serve you in your integration into WebVR. Yes, you’re going to have to learn a whole new slew of information, but at least the work you already have under your belt is still applicable.

4. Get SMART

webvr development

Source

“SMART” is an acronym that stands for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Basically, you want to keep your goal from being vague, to create a metric for you to track the advancement of your goal. You want to keep your goals manageable and doable, so as to keep the pie-in-the-sky from preventing you from making progress. The goals that you set should only be moving you forward in the advancement to the skills you are trying to develop, and you need to set a time-table for the progress that you are trying to achieve.

You might want to consider engaging with members from an active forum and sharing your daily progress there. The advantages of posting your work on a forum is many-fold. Firstly, it serves as a journal of your progress, and, after a few years, you’ll have a better picture regarding how far you’ve come in your journey. Another advantage is feedback and mentorship – getting the opinions of your fellow programmers, their suggestions, recommendations, and stories of their successes and failures can help develop your skills and bypass some of the growing pains that might otherwise serve as an obstacle you would have to overcome. WebVR is a new and burgeoning field, and any stressors that you can shave off your learning curve will greatly decrease your likelihood of giving up due to frustration and increase your chances of success.

5. Keep Your Style

More than anything else, remember to keep your learning style. You have made it this far, and you did it your way. Remember to keep this sense about you as you are picking up these new WebVR skills, because this will help ensure that you retain your new knowledge and apply it properly.

Also, remember to keep your own style in the content that you create. Anyone can learn to program, but the thing that will make you stand out from the rest is the individuality that you bring to your content. Especially when you are learning: create the content that YOU want to see. Your personal perspective is the thing that companies will be looking for, and the number one thing that you can share with the world.

Whenever you see that you’re lagging with your learning or that a few days went by and you didn’t do anything to progress, try to reflect on the reasons behind your intention to learn. If you find yourself procrastinating, read about time management, stay away from useless content consumption and, of course, always remember to have fun with it!

28 Educational Podcasts for Web Designers & Developers

This post was written by Stacy Hilton. Longtime tech tester, her main field of interest is the new emerging virtual reality technology. She’s recently co-founded ProBestVR.com where she shares her passion for the technology that she believes will be the future of digital.

Featured image source

Filed Under: Development Tagged With: development, programmers, VR

Recent Posts

  • 31 Fresh Design Elements for Spring and Easter
  • 10 Templates for Music Concert Flyers
  • How to Build a Web Scraper Using Node.js
  • Best PHP Books, Courses and Tutorials in 2022
  • How to Get Your First Web Design Client

Archives

  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008

Categories

  • Accessibility
  • Android
  • Apps
  • Art
  • Article
  • Blogging
  • Books
  • Bootstrap
  • Business
  • CSS
  • Design
  • Development
  • Ecommerce
  • Fireworks
  • Flash
  • Freebies
  • Freelance
  • General
  • Giveaway
  • Graphic Design
  • HTML5
  • Icons
  • Illustrator
  • InDesign
  • Infographics
  • Inspirational
  • Interview
  • Jobs
  • jQuery
  • Learning
  • Logos
  • Matrix
  • Minimalism
  • Mobile
  • Motion Graphics
  • Music
  • News
  • Photoshop
  • PHP
  • Promoted
  • Rails
  • Resources
  • Showcase
  • Tools
  • Tutorial
  • Twitter
  • Typography
  • Uncategorized
  • Usability
  • UX
  • Wallpapers
  • Wireframing
  • WordPress
  • Work

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

SpyreStudios © 2022