Zero to Start Podcast: VR development for beginners

"What if I could make an app that could change an entire play area into a horror game?" That's what David Montecalvo, Founder and President of VirtualGo LLC asked himself when he saw the black and white pass-through on the Meta Quest 2, inspiring him to create Hauntify, one of Quest 2's earliest mixed reality games that combined the headset's new experimental pass through...

Web AR and social impact is a powerful combination that fuels dynamic connection, community building, awareness and action - at scale.  On this episode of Zero to Start,  Sarah Porter, Director of Innovative Philanthropy at Hope for Haiti joins me to share the nonprofit's mission, how they started their immersive journey and how you can join 8th Wall's Hope for Haiti challenge happening...

Discover how Cognitive3D’s SDK for Unreal and Unity empowers immersive creators to unlock player behavior and build better 3D experiences with Calder Archinuk, Developer Evangelist at Cognitive3D.  Designing for Player agency in virtual environments is one of many challenges in VR development, yet player agency is also what makes VR an essential medium for capturing and studying player behavior. H...

Dive into the power of Neuroscience and VR to improve brain health with Amir Bozorgzadeh, the cofounder and CEO of Virtuleap.  Brain health as you age affects each and every one of us. Caring for your cognitive well-being is essential for living an independent and fulfilling life.  Virtuleap combines neuroscience and virtual reality to help increase attention levels, and address cognitive illnesse...

Stepping into the Spotlight is Sadah Espii Proctor, XR & Experiential Designer Composer & Spatial Sound Designer  On our 8th and final spotlight episode, recorded on January 2021, Espii shares her philosophy on creating  narrative VR experiences for theater, music and art - and how the pandemic is ushering in new ways to experience live performance.  Among Espii's many accomplishments...

Stepping into the Spotlight is Kai Frazier , Founder and CEO of KaiXR, the most inclusive and accessible VR platform for kids where they can explore, dream and create! On our 7th spotlight episode Kai shares how she radically changed her life as an educator to a solo nontechnical founder in the highly volatile world of VR entrepreneurship. Find out how Kai built an inclusive and accessible VR plat...

Stepping into the spotlight is Lauren Frazier , Cofounder and CTO at Ramen VR, a Y Combinator VR game studio and makers of the award-winning Conjure Strike. On our 6th podcast episode Lauren fills us in on Ramen VR’s upcoming game, Zenith, a cross-platform massive multiplayer for VR funded in part by Oculus. She shares how Y Combinator prepared Ramen VR for the business world, Kickstarter tips for...

Stepping into the spotlight is Jasmine Roberts, an accomplished software engineer who has worked at pioneering companies including Unity, Sony Playstation and Google Creative Lab in New York City where she developed and launched, Lines of Play , a Google experiment AR app highlighting the features of Google’s new AR Core Depth API.  Jasmine was a 2017 Oculus Launch Pad fellow and in 2020 Forbes re...

Stepping into the spotlight is Richard Duck, Store Operations Manager at Oculus.  On this episode of Zero to Start Richard talks about how  his team helps guide developers as they prepare for publishing their titles on the Oculus Store.  Richard highlights the importance of testing all aspects of your VR title and how testing helps create community around your work. We talk about the magic of VR,...

Stepping into the spotlight Kathryn Hicks, AR/VR Designer at the Danse shares how the Savannah College of Art and Design led her to virtual reality, igniting the creation of her first animated 360 film, Tall Tales of the Aerona Temple .  Kathryn fills us in on her latest project working alongside Memphis developer Justin Palmer on Mend , a cross-platform puzzle game and 2019 Oculus Launch Pad scho...

Stepping into the spotlight Clorama Dorvilias, Product Manager at Oculus shares her first ah-ha moment in VR, her previous experience building VR training solutions to reduce bias in education, new Oculus product releases, tips for aspiring VR product managers and her quarantine playlist. Happy installing! Follow Clorama on Twitter @CreativeClo Subscribe to Clorama's YouTube Channel Share, li...

Siciliana Trevino is excited to bring you her new Zero to Start Spotlight series featuring insightful conversations with VR creators and industry leaders about how you can break into VR, brought to you by Oculus from Facebook. Now in its fifth year Oculus Launch Pad is an essential VR developer program designed for promising content creators from diverse backgrounds. 2020 Applications are open unt...

Our 7th episode finds us in another Mercury retrograde, over 100 days since Berkeley announced its shelter in place and reminiscing about Berkeley's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast last January. Melanie takes a 3D scan of her garden using the Display.land mobile app by Ubiquity6 (which is now discontinued), succeeds in building her first Unity scene, although we get an app ID error wh...

Ten weeks ago the Bay Area began sheltering in place. Learning how to build an oasis in VR has never been more profound or essential, if not disorienting as we face a staggering loss of life from Covid-19 and outrage over the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.  As we learn how to turn on the lights in the virtual world we’re building with Unity, reality is in turmoil and in need of healing. Wh...

We're back! Thanks to Berkeley Community Media, Melanie has a new VR-ready gaming PC and is all set with Unity Hub and the Oculus Rift CV1. On this episode we reflect on my early days in VR (way back in 2015) and my first GearVR project, how VR development keeps you on your toes, we dive into Melanie's new PC and the VR experiences she's been exploring including AltSpace and VRChat....

We're on lock down! Last week on March 15th Berkeley, then two days later, the state of California issued a Stay at Home order that moved us from the basement of the matrix and onto Zoom. What is an essential business and does it include cannabis clubs? Will social distancing increase VR adoption or will the supply chain limit VR to industry and early adopters? Are we living in a simulation s...

As COVID-19 changes life as we know it and has industry scrambling to prioritize public health and employee safety by minimizing travel, canceling GDC and SXSW among many other high profile events, Social VR takes center stage in conversations about working remotely and collaborating at a distance. The challenge is, how accessible is VR outside of the industry's early adopters?  The pandemic...

We're ready to blame the stars for the blues, snafus and surprises we encountered in the basement of the matrix this week. Whether or not you believe in Mercury Retrograde, when technical difficulties are at their astrological peak (happening now through March 9th btw), Unity development is a moving target that will have you retracing your steps just when you thought you knew where you were g...

Welcome to the basement of the matrix! We're kicking off our first episode with the basics of setting up your PC for VR development including installing Windows updates, clearing up the drives and installing Visual Studio 2019 . We outline our project goals and talk about the benefits of making a VR portfolio to submit to the Oculus Start Program for independent developers. What's inside...