Drash is a VR developer best known for creating the educational experience of Titans of Space. Here’s the official release thread on the Oculus Developer forums that details all that’s been updated for it to be compatible with DK2. He talks about some of the changes that he made under the hood to build it out more in the future as well finding the right scale ratio, and how so many people reacted to the evocative music loops that he got from Jon Hillman’s “This is Now” music loops in the Unity3D asset store.
Drash also did a number of optimizations to make it run faster as well as other refactoring to make it easier to add more tours in the future that go beyond our solar system.
He talks about some of the challenges with getting DK2 demos working in this early stage and working around some new quirks, but that overall the DK2 port was a drag and drop experience.
Drash has also been an active participant in both the in the Reddit r/oculus and Oculus Development forums, and has done a number of Rift Demo round-ups. He noticed that a lot of developers are hungry for feedback, and has gone out of his way to try as many demos as possible and provide feedback where he can.
A couple of Drash’s favorite developers to keep eye on include include /u/BaseDeltaZer0 who did the Ambient Flight & PolyWorld DK2 demo. As well as Tore Knabe, who is known as Tamulur on the Oculus Developer forums.
He talks about some of his other experimental demos including helping phantom limb pain with an Amputee VR Therapy, the TNG Engineering Star Trek engineering room, and a VR experience where you see the world as if you were color blind. Drash talks about his own hearing impairment and how that makes him particularly sensitive to making VR experiences more accessible for everyone, and suggests looking at GameAccessibilityGuidelines.com for more details.
Finally, he talks a bit about his future plans in making more educational and game experiences, and looks forward to being able to loose himself within a MMORPG VR experience while still being connected to his obligations in reality. He sees that reality and VR will eventually start to merge through AR, and that he doesn’t hold any judgements against people who choose to spend time in immersive environments because they’re building memories, and that’s what it’s all about.
To keep track of Drash and his future VR ventures, then be sure to keep tabs on DrashVR.com
TOPICS
- 0:00 – Developed Titans of Space to see scale and flying in space. Started as a Hobby, but it’s getting more serious now.
- 0:44 – Made the Top 20 demos of 2013, and was the only educational demo on there. What type of feedback have you gotten. Lots of positive and constructive feedback. People really respond to the music that changes in intensity as you go through the tour.
- 2:12 – Jon Hillman’s “This is Now” music loops in the Unity3D asset store (preview). Cross fade from one sample to the next.
- 3:24 – Approach to scale in Titans of Space. 1:1,000,000 was the end result of an iterative result. Moving away from multiple camera.s
- 4:30 – Experience of porting Titans of Space from DK1 to DK2. Still things that need to be ironed out. Toggle between VR and non-VR mode. Work it on non-VR mode and then build it out to take a look. Zooming is an experimental feature that messes with the field of view to zoom, and it breaks with every new SDK.
- 6:26 – Rearchitected Titans of Space, but not because of DK2 because the first version was a bit rushed and sloppy. Had to realize new issues to take into consideration once
- 7:40 – Options low persistence, time warp, black smear correction. Turn off low persistence to see what it’s like.
- 8:35 – Challenges getting stuff running. CymaticBruce’s 25-minute troubleshooting video. A little bit of black magic because it’s not idempotent, and have to try things multiple times. A bit more stable to run as Direct to VR HMD mode. Helps to have a trivial scene pop up immediate at the beginning. Some vertical tearing, and you can disable and re-enable sync.
- 10:47 – Challenging to test every combination of hardware and software. Turn off time warp because issues from the graphics card. That’s why he put in that feature. Demos need to run at 75fps, and shouldn’t rely on Time Warp.
- 12:00 – Optimizing Titans of Space. Went from 4 million to 100k vertices. Have planets come and go, and some people like the planets like to stay put and people like to be able to compare.
- 13:15 – What provides immersion in VR. Realistic lighting and self-shadowing really help with immersion.
- 14:07 – Special lighting? A lot of stuff is faked. Special tricks for on-bard lights
- 14:48 – Controlling the path of the camera. Set up some curves beforehand.
- 15:28 – Compact version was something that was requested by viewers
- 16:11 – Planning on exploring beyond our solar system. Exoplanets. Galaxies. Nebula.
- 16:50 – Building specific 3D models for these since there’s not a lot of freely available models.
- 17:36 – Active in the Reddit r/oculus and Oculus Development forums. Checks 10-20 times a day to see what’s new. The rate that new posts and topics are coming up are so much that he can’t keep up. Others have stepped up. CymaticBruce’s DK2 resources post that was made sticky. VRApps.co is a new site that sends out e-mail notifications with each new VR app release.
- 19:15 – Spent a lot of time trying out every demo that was coming out for a while. A lot of novel and interesting ideas that are out there that may seed other ideas, and it contributes to the whole ecosystem.
- 20:40 – Experiences that may be beneath the radar. Developers to keep an eye on include: /u/BaseDeltaZer0 (Ambient Flight & PolyWorld DK2 demo) & Tamulur on the Oculus Developer forums. (aka Tore Knabe)
- 21:37 – Did a top 5 list for a while. So many good different ones
- 22:31 – Experimental minor demos listed on Drash VR website. A series of small to medium experiences.
- 24:00 – Color blindness to make it more accessible for people. Has a hearing disability and is sensitivity to making VR experiences as accessible as possible. Check out http://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/ for more details
- 25:46 – Amputee therapy
- 26:48 – TNG Engineering demo of a Star Track Engineering room, and wanted to experience it in VR and learn more about lighting in VR
- 27:37 – Building educational experiences in VR. Make it entertaining and use gameplay mechanics. Lots of things you can do in VR that you can’t do in reality. Possibilities are endless
- 28:40 – Want to do both more educational experiences and gaming as well.
- 29:36 – Learning with surprise was delightful. Some people felt vulnerable in space. Other surprising reactions. Some people are really muted while others have wild over the top reactions. Lack of positional tracking in DK1 is uncomfortable after using DK2.
- 31:14 – Text broke immersion for some people. Low res or turning off anti-aliasing seemed to break immersion for some people. Debates about scale.
- 32:18 – Changing scale warning so that he could use a single camera for the entire experience
- 32:49 – Ultimate potential of VR. Played some MMORPG and wonder if it was wasting his time, but looking forward to loosing himself to a certain degree in VR to create new memories. Reality and VR will merge over time.
- 34:12 – Regrets of playing games? Or worth it? No regrets, but getting serious about purpose in life later than he thought he would. 35 years old now and wishes that VR had come along sooner in his life. Need to have all his ducks in a row in reality first include obligations, marriage and day job. Enjoys that stability. No judgments for people who choose to spend time in immersive environments building memories.
- 35:45: http://www.drashvr.com/ to keep posted.
Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:12.015] Drash: I'm known as Drash. Tactics of Space was just a small little idea I came up with while I was on a trip. So just kind of brainstorming in the car about things I wanted to see for myself in VR. You know, scale is a huge part of it because it's something you can finally sense now. So I just wanted to kind of compare this and that. This started as a hobby. just something I would do in my spare time, just probably like many others, and just kind of snowball it into something that I wanted to do very seriously.
[00:00:44.352] Kent Bye: Yeah, interesting. I think that what really struck me about Titans of Space was that as I was watching the top 20 demos that Somatic Bruce did, this was one that was like number four. It was like the only non-gaming educational demo that really made that top list. And it seemed to be an experience that people were really responding to. Can you talk a bit about the type of feedback that you were getting from the Titans of Space?
[00:01:12.249] Drash: Sure, sure. The vast majority of the feedback is very positive, and I'm just incredibly grateful for that because I know that it's tough to get positive feedback in a day where it's hard to get people to play your games as an indie developer. You know, a lot of the feedback has been very constructive, so I'm thankful to the community for that. A lot of ideas to sort of fold back into it as time goes on. What I could tell from what people told me, they actually responded more to the music than anything else, so I think It was probably a good move on my part to find and use this one piece of music that can kind of change in intensity as you go through different parts of the tour. When I was growing up, I saw a documentary where a tour through the outer solar system was paired with some really great classical music. And it was done really well so that exciting scenes were matched with exciting parts of the music. And it just really heightens the experience.
[00:02:11.437] Kent Bye: Yeah. Talk a bit about the actual looping of the music, because what I've noticed is that as you're going from one section to the next, it's kind of an on-rails experience where it's a guided tour and you don't have a lot of freedom to move around. And so you're basically just saying, okay, I'm ready to go to the next section, but talk about what you were doing in terms of the music to be able to take what loop was playing and then go on to the next loop.
[00:02:37.779] Drash: Well, the way that the composer has set it up is that when you want to change to a different level of intensity, you simply crossfade from one to the next. And these are already set up so that you can synchronize them. So we'll just seamlessly play into the other. So really, I give a lot of credit to the composer whose name is John Hillman, by the way, johnhillman.com.
[00:03:03.454] Kent Bye: Okay, so that's why it sort of feels so seamless, is that it's actually matching it to the beat? Is that what I'm understanding?
[00:03:10.201] Drash: I don't know that it's really about matching it to the beat, it's just that each intensity track is meant to be crossfaded seamlessly from one to the other, as long as you sort of sync them up at like the right sample within that clip.
[00:03:23.856] Kent Bye: I see. Well, talk a bit about the approach that you took to scale. Obviously, with the solar system, you have objects that are so huge that if you made them one-to-one scale, that wouldn't make any sense at all. You wouldn't see anything. So how did you go about, you know, deciding what the right scale would be in order to get this relative comparison between the sizes of all the different bodies in our solar system?
[00:03:47.094] Drash: You know, it was an iterative process, trial and error, basically, to see what would work Not just an artistic decision, but also just technical limits of the Unity engine. You can't have things that are too big while also having this small little cockpit in front of you. I mean, you can, but I've actually moved away from using multiple cameras, you know, layered on top of each other, just so that it works a little bit more seamlessly with the Oculus SDK. So, yeah, you know, I've mainly just tried to keep things at toy size, you know, so that you can really sense the stereo depth and everything. I don't know, it just worked out that way, a one to one million scale.
[00:04:27.467] Kent Bye: Interesting. This is kind of the first podcast that I've done since the DK2s have started to go out and the SDKs or two iterations of that have been out there. Talk a bit about your experience in terms of porting Titans of Space from DK1 to DK2.
[00:04:47.233] Drash: Well, you know, for the most part it is, a drag-and-drop experience, but working with it inside of Unity, for example, is now a little bit more difficult until they get some of the things, until Oculus gets some of the stuff ironed out. I'm fortunate that I have set up a way for me to toggle between non-VR mode and VR mode just for myself when I'm working with this stuff, because I can't quite get the VR mode stuff to work very well while I'm there in the editor working on it. So I'm really just working on it in normal non-VR mode. And then if I want to try in VR mode, I'd have to build it, get out, and do the real thing. So that's been helpful. Other than that, it's just drag and drop, straight replacement SDK. I have a feature in Titan Space for zooming. And that particular feature has basically been broken with every single SDK release. And it's understandable because I'm playing with the field of view, which is something that Oculus specifically does not want anyone to do, really. But, you know, in small doses, I think it's OK as long as, you know, people aren't being nauseated by it. And so far, I haven't heard anybody complain. So, you know, I'm just reducing the field of view when people want to zoom. So the new SDK has some interesting multiple layers of abstraction to kind of dig through to get to where you can finally do that now, where previously you could just change the field of view on the cameras themselves. So that's been interesting to work with, and I'm sure it will iron out and mature over time.
[00:06:25.081] Kent Bye: And did you have to re-architect anything in terms of rebuilding it from scratch when you're going from DK1 to DK2? I know that you had said that you're going to start to be doing tours in the future, so I don't know if there's anything that you had to change from the underlying architecture in order to enable those tours to be dropped in in the future.
[00:06:45.645] Drash: I did re-architect it, but not specifically for the DK2. I re-architected it because when I first made it, I did not know that you know, so many people would enjoy it, and that I would have a chance to sort of make something out of it. So, you know, a lot of the coding was a little sloppy and kind of rushed, and I was still kind of learning Unity at the time. So I did it right the second time around. It will make it a lot easier on me to sort of create more compelling content as follow-up sequels and things like that. But for DK2, no, I really just, you know, I had to get the DK2 into my hands. I had to realize, okay, here's all these new issues to deal with, with positional tracking, black smearing, you know, making sure that there's no tearing, vertical tearing, you know, all these other new little issues that popped up that I never would have expected.
[00:07:39.443] Kent Bye: Yeah, and it looks like you have a fair number of different options that are new within the DK2 release of Titans of Space. Things ranging from low persistence, time warp, turning off positional tracking, black smear correction. Why would someone want to, for example, turn off low persistence? What would be the use case for why they'd want to turn that off?
[00:08:01.769] Drash: If they want to turn it off, it would just be to see what the benefit is, what they're losing, what they're gaining. how it differs from, you know, what it used to be at full persistence. It's really sort of a, just kind of play with the option and see what the difference is kind of thing. But, you know, in some cases it's helpful just to have that option there because low persistence is off when they start the demo for some inexplicable reason, just for some people that has happened. So it's helpful to have the option to just take it right back on, you know, when they need to.
[00:08:33.676] Kent Bye: Yeah, this seems like it's kind of like still in the early days of people needing to go through a lot of hoops to even get stuff running. I know that Cymatic Bruce did a whole 25 minute video after he had set up 17 different laptops and environments for alt space VR and it gave all sorts of different things that you need to do just to get it. It seems like a little bit of black magic right now just to get things working. So I don't know if, What type of feedback you've gotten in terms of, or even your experiences with running a lot of DK2 demos of what it's taken to get them up and running?
[00:09:09.196] Drash: Yeah, it's funny you say black magic because there's just so many different factors. And lately there's been the realization that, you know, all of these sort of scientific empirical testing that's been going on is affected by the fact that if you do the same thing twice in a row, you get different results. So, I mean, a lot of times, you fire up a demo, it crashes, and you fire it up again, it works. So, that's definitely throwing a wrench into the gears of, you know, figuring things out. But, you know, with Oculus' latest SDK update, it does seem like it's a bit more stable for most people to be able to run in the direct HMD access mode. But there's still a few things that have to be done inside the demo itself in order to take care of that in a seamless fashion. For example, I think it helps now to have sort of a trivial scene at the startup. Like in my case, I have like a loading, please wait thing that just pops right up and then it's loading the real thing. And I think it helps to have something pop up immediately. It doesn't cause things to break down so easily. And there's still a question of vertical carrying for some people. So, I mean, somebody made a post on the Oculus forums how to send commands to the SDK to disable and re-enable vSync, and it actually gets rid of the vertical carrying. So there's little things like that that just, you know, they shouldn't have to be done, but they're necessary for now, unfortunately. But we'll get there.
[00:10:44.963] Kent Bye: Yeah, it seems like that, you know, there's so many different combinations that I would imagine that it's extremely difficult for Oculus VR to test every single imaginable configuration of hardware and software that could be put together within a computer. So It seems like it's still in that early phases of kind of working through a lot of those issues. One thing that I saw that I thought was interesting that someone had to turn off Time Warp in order to get it to work because it was giving issues with their graphics card. Have you seen that in terms of Time Warp being a specific feature and functionality within the DK2 that is giving some people issues?
[00:11:21.448] Drash: Yeah, I have heard people that are only able to get a good experience by turning off Time Warp. And that's specifically the reason why I put that toggle in there, because it's just, I can't possibly support everybody unless I put that toggle in there so people can just do it for themselves. Personally, with Time Warp, I have noticed that it's been beneficial for the occasional hiccup where there's garbage collection going on or, you know, just loading something up for the first time. That's helpful. But at the end of the day, demos just need to be running at a really high frame rate. and just try not even to rely on time warp.
[00:11:58.108] Kent Bye: I see. What were some of the things that you had to do in order to really optimize the experience so you could get 75 frames per second in Titans of Space?
[00:12:06.814] Drash: Yeah, let's see. I did a lot of different things, a lot of things that were just really too inefficient when I first put it together. I had about four and a half million vertices, a lot of those part of the cockpit, a lot of the planets and the stars and things like that in the background. revamped all of that to get it down to 100,000 vertices total on screen at any one time. So that right there did quite a bit. Some other little things to just make sure that there's not a lot going on at any one time. And one thing I did was have planets kind of coming in and going during the tour. And that probably is not the right move because I think that a lot of people miss the way that it was in the original Titans of Space where all those planets would just kind of stay put and so the farther away you get from the sun you kind of look back and you see this whole lineup and that kind of gives you a better sense of scale which was kind of the whole point which is to compare scale. So I'll probably put that back in or at least make it an option either way.
[00:13:09.852] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think defaulting to things not zooming around would probably be good. It's one of the things I noticed is that having things kind of zoom in, it kind of breaks immersion in some sense because, you know, things wouldn't actually be moving that fast. So I'm curious about different things that you've noticed in terms of what gives a stronger sense of presence or immersion when you're in the experience.
[00:13:32.215] Drash: Well, for Titans of Space in particular, I'm too close to it. I've run through it five million times. It's no longer something that is a source of immersion for me. But in other experiences, I would say realistic lighting, however simple, all the other aspects of the graphics are realistic lighting. It's always helpful. Self-shadowing and things like that. I mean, a lot of these things aren't even in Titans of Space just because That was part of my drive to increase performance. But, you know, mainly I would say lighting is the big thing.
[00:14:07.419] Kent Bye: Yeah, that's something that I'm curious about. If you had to do any special lighting in terms of like, is everything illuminated by the sun? Or did you have like lights that are kind of shadowing behind the camera as it's moving through space in order to actually illuminate everything?
[00:14:22.216] Drash: Yeah, a lot of the stuff is faked. The light from the sun, you know, it's just a directional thing for those planets and there's a separate light just for like some of the little asteroids and things like that in your own body. The light from the little panel in front of you that says like ready or automatic pilot and things like that, that's not actually emitting light, it's just changing the color of your body, little things like that.
[00:14:46.498] Kent Bye: When you're flying a camera through space, in this case it's literally space in the solar system, are you actually programmatically saying, go from here to here? Or how are you actually determining the path of a camera moving around like that?
[00:15:00.974] Drash: Yeah, I've set up beforehand some curves, depending on whether you're in the compact or the complete route. Depending on whether you're in the high-intensity mode or the low-intensity mode, you know, there's different paths to follow. That was part of my whole re-architecting, just be able to kind of make it easy for me to sort of have these branching paths depending on different conditions, things like that.
[00:15:24.835] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think one thing that I've noticed in terms of demoing Titans of Space is that sometimes people can take as fast as, you know, seven, eight minutes or as long as 30 to 40, 50 minutes. So it's something that I've noticed that it'd be nice to have that compact version. And so What sort of brought that about in terms of, I could only empathize and imagine if you're giving this demo a lot of times that you kind of want to get people to get the gist of it and sort of move on to the next person if you're at a public show or something, but what sort of brought that option about to have like more of a compact mode?
[00:15:59.872] Drash: That was just feedback that came straight from players of the original version. And they said, Hey, you know, I wish there was a mini tour and that was it.
[00:16:09.858] Kent Bye: And so moving forward, you have talked about that you were planning on doing more extensive tours. I'm curious, what type of things are you planning on exploring beyond just our solar system?
[00:16:23.208] Drash: Yeah, that's a very good question. I have some loose ideas for some things and some very solid ideas that are already storyboarded out and I've been discussing with a composer and sourcing some 3D data and things like that. Other topics, you know, may include things like exoplanets, galaxies, nebula, just whatever I think will be interesting to sort of explore firsthand, so to speak.
[00:16:49.554] Kent Bye: And you know, in some ways the solar system's pretty straightforward in terms of the spheres and textures around that. But once you get to like other more complex nebulae and other stars that are up and close and galaxies and whatnot, how are you going about in terms of creating those? Are you actually going to be 3D modeling them or are there models out there that you'd be using?
[00:17:12.574] Drash: There are not a whole lot of freely available or even publicly available models of things like that. So a lot of it I am creating by myself or at least having it be procedurally created at runtime. It's just going to be a mix of all that, just whatever looks good and is reasonably accurate based on all of the material that's out there so far.
[00:17:36.098] Kent Bye: And another thing that you've been pretty active in is both the Reddit and the Oculus developer forums. And I'm curious if you could talk a bit about your strategy when it comes to keeping tabs of what's happening in the VR community.
[00:17:50.885] Drash: F5, F5, F5. No, I seriously do check 10, 20 times a day on both of those forums just to see what's new. there's always something new, there's always something interesting to read and really the rate at which new posts and topics are being posted in both of those places is just astounding. Now, I can't keep up, I can't keep up like I used to. I had those Rift demo roundups that were posted every two weeks and I have dropped the ball on those because I just can't keep up. Fortunately, it appears that others have stepped in to you know, to do what they do best, which is to, you know, for example, Cymatic has been posting all those resources and demos that are coming out. He did a very good job of that. That's a sticky for a reason. It's a good place to start. VRapps.co is a new site that has been doing an incredible job of keeping up on everything. Every little update and new app and experience and utility that comes out, I get an email saying, here it is. Here's a new update. Here's everything you need to know. So I'm just like, you know, I don't need to do that anymore. And that's okay, because I've just been too busy with my own stuff to keep up, which is fine.
[00:19:13.910] Kent Bye: Well, it sounds like you've at least started to invest over the past year, a lot of time in terms of exploring what else is out there and what other developers are doing and taking the time to provide feedback. And I'm curious if you could talk a bit about that experience of doing that just when it was feasible to do that. And like specifically things that really stick out to you in terms of trying out all these demos and sort of insights or little nuggets that really stuck with you.
[00:19:41.338] Drash: Well, I would say one thing that kind of stuck out was that, you know, regardless of whatever developer's skill level or experience level with creating these 3D experiences, a lot of them have some really novel, interesting ideas that, you know, even if they don't follow up with themselves, is pretty good as a seed for an idea, maybe for somebody else. So I think that Anybody and everybody that tries their hand at making VR experiences is contributing a great deal to the whole budding ecosystem. So I think that's great. Overall, it's been quite fun to dive into an entirely new world of somebody else's imagination or whatever. I know that everybody is dying for feedback, so I'm just doing the best I can to give that. I haven't done that in the last couple of weeks, but in general, that's something I try to do.
[00:20:37.144] Kent Bye: And what were some of the experiences that you really enjoyed that may be beneath the radar of a lot of people?
[00:20:44.527] Drash: Beneath the radar? Well, at some point, everybody's gotten some exposure, but you know, there are some developers out there that I think do really good work, and I think that they are going to go far. The two that come to mind right now are BaseDeltaZero on Reddit and Tamler. I forgot his real name, but it's Tamler on Oculus Forms. Those two developers have done an incredible job creating polished, original experiences that are just pushing the limits. And I can't wait to see what they do next.
[00:21:22.653] Kent Bye: Yeah, I know at least for the last portion of your demo roundups, you were actually giving your top five, which I thought was interesting because not only are you kind of aggregating all this, but you're clearly trying as many as you can, if not all of them. But most of the time, you're sort of saying, here's my top five that you should go check out. Are there any of those that sort of come to mind in terms of demos that really stuck out for you?
[00:21:47.109] Drash: Just anything by those two developers I mentioned, just really countless more. I mean, there are so many good experiences out there, but they're all so different. So I really can't single them out really. And I only posted those top fives just because it was a popular demand, you know, that people can't even keep up with the 30 that are released every two weeks. So they wanted to really narrow down, you know, what handful should I look at? You know, what are the highlights? And so I didn't want to, uh, single people out and say that everybody else's work is not worth trying, so it just stuck with sort of a fixed number, five. So that worked for a while, but yeah, I haven't kept up.
[00:22:31.597] Kent Bye: Another thing that I sort of discovered as I was looking on your website that I thought was interesting is that it looks like you've done a number of these little one-off experimental demos where you're just trying one small thing to experiment with in VR. Maybe you could talk about some of those that you were doing in terms of just prototyping and experimenting and what you were trying to figure out with those.
[00:22:54.242] Drash: Generally, those all come down to, man, I wish I could see this in VR. I get distracted from whatever I'm working on and I spend a few hours on it. And I said, some of those are projects. I haven't really posted all of those on there on the website yet. Some of them are still ideas in progress that I want to turn into finished, polished experiences and then release. But I'm not ready to talk about those yet, but there's definitely quite a few of those. And so whenever I get the time, I'm going right back to those, getting DK2 into them and all the rest.
[00:23:29.467] Kent Bye: Oh wow, that sort of gets my curiosity peak there as to what you've got cooking up. Are those like a bunch of small demos or are you talking about one sort of big project that you've been working on?
[00:23:40.869] Drash: Oh, I would say mostly they're pretty small, kind of small-medium, you know. They're not insignificant, they're not just a single little scene, look around and that's it. There's some serious game mechanic things going on, you know. So they would be full-fledged prototypes, hopefully fun.
[00:23:58.593] Kent Bye: Oh, awesome. Looking forward to seeing when those land. One of the things that you had done was really looking at color blindness, which I think is interesting to throw in different color palettes to kind of almost build empathy for, are you designing a game so that it's going to be accessible to as many people as possible? Maybe you could talk a bit about that and some of the insights you got from working on that.
[00:24:23.120] Drash: Yeah, you know, that came about because I have a soft spot for those that have some disability one way or the other that sort of impacts their ability to enjoy these experiences that so many others are talking about. And the reason for that is I have a hearing loss. My left ear is deaf and my right ear has, you know, some serious, you know, issues and stuff. So I appreciate personally subtitles anywhere and everywhere. You know, that's something I'm hoping to see in certain social VR experiences, where there's a lot of sort of voice chat going on. And that stuff is really awesome. And I am just hoping that it doesn't leave, you know, hearing impaired people out too much. And I know this is not really a way around it, but there are a lot of things that can be done to augment the situation, especially because VR is where you can do anything. So, Yeah, that's one thing I'd like to see. And then I was also looking at a site for all the different things that can be done to make a game more accessible. Gameaccessibilityguidelines.com. So, you know, one thing on there was, you know, colorblindness. And so I just kind of played around with that. And that makes it easy to kind of make sure that, you know, you don't have like buttons and things like that that are going to be ambiguous to those with colorblindness.
[00:25:44.630] Kent Bye: And another one that you have listed here is amputee therapy. What is that in terms of what's the experience and what you were trying to do with that?
[00:25:52.491] Drash: That is the result of someone approaching me to put something together to use with the Razor Hydra so that he could help, I believe it was his aunt, work through some phantom limb pain. And the usual mirror technique wasn't working. So we were trying to work out some ways in which VR could be leveraged to show both legs but without the mirror and to be able to have the flexibility of your razor hydras moving the good leg or moving the missing leg or both. So it was a little bit of an experiment and it's not completely done or completely polished but it's something.
[00:26:37.165] Kent Bye: Talk a bit about the TNG engineering. What is that demo all about for you?
[00:26:42.997] Drash: That was, you know, inspired by some of the bridge demos that had just come out before that. I found a model for the engineering bay and that really struck a chord with me because that was just like something that I have good memories of, you know, as a nerd growing up watching Star Trek. So, you know, I wanted to see that. And that was an exercise in learning how to get the lighting to look good. And this was right around the time when Unreal Engine 4 had just come out and was wowing everybody with its sort of built-in lighting capability and things like that. And I was just thinking, you know what? Somebody should show everybody that Unity can do the same things, you know? So that was sort of a defiance move, basically. But yeah, I'm glad that it seems like a lot of other people liked it too.
[00:27:35.526] Kent Bye: Nice. So I think education is going to be a pretty huge part of virtual reality and I'm curious from your perspective of doing Titans of Space, what type of things did you really take away in terms of building an educational experience for VR?
[00:27:51.062] Drash: My takeaway is that education can be done in a more entertaining way now. I mean it's already been sort of a a theme where you try to educate people without them realizing they're being educated through some sort of a gameplay mechanic or other kind of entertainment. I think that that simply can just be taken to the next level, because you can kind of see things that are tangible looking, although you can't actually touch them, but there's still a lot to be learned from that. As it's VR, since you can do anything basically, defy the laws of physics, there's a lot of things you can do with that. Time travel, as other people have done, You could have a classroom setting where the teacher is looking you right in the eye, but she's also looking everybody in the eye because it's VR, so anything can be done. I'm sure the possibilities are endless. I wouldn't even know where to begin to chase that down.
[00:28:44.943] Kent Bye: Are you interested in doing more educational experiences, or are you wanting to get into more of actual interactions within VR that feel more like you're playing a game rather than just having an experience?
[00:28:57.347] Drash: I'm interested in both. I'm very interested in pursuing my particular approach to education through, you know, guided tour with compelling music and things like that. Because it makes me think of like Disneyland rides. It's a very passive thing, but it kind of takes you through these kind of fantastical worlds and things happen. But, you know, when you grow up, it gets a little bit kind of obvious, you know, how things are moving behind the scenes and everything kind of mechanical. and it loses a little bit of its luster. And I think that VR can revive that a little bit and throw in educational stuff along the way.
[00:29:36.297] Kent Bye: Yeah, the people that I've shown it to it was interesting that they were very familiar with the solar system, but there was still yet things that they were surprised about that they didn't know and that that element of surprise was very delightful for them and that they found themselves really just kind of like sharing it. And another surprising reaction that I saw that I didn't expect was that some people felt very vulnerable being in a wide Open space and you know feeling like they were very small and insignificant but also at risk for being harmed in some way and so they were really just kind of like Covering up their body in a protective stance and that I had never seen that before Are there any other reactions that you've seen that were really surprising that you didn't expect?
[00:30:20.362] Drash: What you just told me is very surprising. I hadn't seen that that's really interesting Wow other reactions The reactions vary. It's just people are just very muted and just kind of looking around and okay, no big deal. And other people, it's just, it's wild. It's amazing. So the reactions vary and I haven't really pinned down exactly what it is yet. I'm wondering if the experience would be improved with the DK2 now. Maybe they're not simultaneously combating the discomfort from the motion blur and lack of positional tracking because now when I use the DK1 after having used the DK2, lack of positional tracking actually does throw me off now. It's really uncomfortable. It's kind of amazing how much of a leap this just took.
[00:31:11.624] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I know that for some people having text being seen in that environment was breaking the immersion for them in terms of it kind of not feeling realistic because they knew that text wouldn't normally be hovering around these planets in that way. And there's the option to obviously turn that off, but I'm curious if there is other things that you found that people, when they were seeing it, whether or not they felt like they were kind of being taken out of the experience by some of the things that were within Titans of Space.
[00:31:42.206] Drash: Yeah, you know, if you don't have anti-aliasing on, if you didn't run it at the higher resolution at the time, that definitely did not help because everything was just very pixely, very shimmery, and it still is to some extent, but it's better now. And let's see, the other thing is that There's been a debate about whether the scale is ideal. Some people like having it down to a toy size where they could see everything in stereo, and other people wish it was way bigger. So that's always going on, even with the DK2 version. But that's not the intent of Titans of Space.
[00:32:18.060] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I noticed that you had a new section in there warning people, hey, we're about to change the scale after you see the sun and you start to bring in the other stars. What brought about that change?
[00:32:28.867] Drash: That was so that I could use a single camera setup for the entire experience. Once I got to the large stars part, it was very difficult to have them render properly at the same time while being able to see your own body inside your cockpit. So, yeah, I just kind of had to bring that down a little bit.
[00:32:47.739] Kent Bye: What do you see as the ultimate potential for virtual reality, for what it can do and what it can provide?
[00:32:54.283] Drash: Well, that's going to be an ongoing evolution, I'm sure. But, you know, I'm looking forward to, you know, I played a couple of MMORPGs and while I'm not, while I'm still struggling with, was I wasting my time? Was I creating wonderful memories all I have for the rest of my life and kind of some new crazy world? You know, that's always the kind of question I kind of battle with myself. But I think that I would still like to experience another one of those in VR. you know, assuming my life allows for it. But, you know, I'm sure that many other people feel the same after watching things like Sword Art online and all the other pop culture references and things like that. You know, people are going to want to lose themselves in a new world with new rules and new laws of physics in a very visceral way that's going to really heighten that sense of creating new memories and stuff that you can kind of take with you long after you're done with that world. That's really kind of the short term. The long term, you know, reality and VR will merge, I'm sure, especially once AR gets into the mix. It's just really hard to predict anything at that point, but it'll be interesting.
[00:34:12.047] Kent Bye: It sounded like you were having a little bit of hesitation in terms of whether or not you felt like you were wasting your time by spending all the time playing video games. And I'm curious if you could expand on that a little bit in terms of whether or not you had regrets of doing that or whether or not you integrate that into, oh, that was actually really worth doing that. I'm really glad I did that.
[00:34:34.942] Drash: Yeah, I don't actually have regrets. I just think that I'm really kind of getting serious about my purpose in life a little bit later than I thought I would, maybe 10 years late. So, you know, I'm 35 now and I wish that VR and, you know, all the VR development stuff had come along a lot sooner in my life. And while I do think that our lifespans will be longer and longer, you know, I'm not at all confident that it applies to me. So just kind of trying to be careful about that, trying to make sure I have my ducks in a row in reality. I'm married. I've got, you know, obligations and day job and, you know, I need that security and that stability. So I can't spend all my time in something that takes me out of all that. But if I didn't have those, then, you know, there you go. VR would be just amazing and wonderful. And I have absolutely no judgments about people that choose to spend their time you know, in an immersive environment, building memories, because memories is what it's all about.
[00:35:46.025] Kent Bye: Great. And finally, what's the best place for people to keep in touch and keep up with what you're doing?
[00:35:52.586] Drash: I would say DrashVR.com is basically my blog site where I kind of keep some of my active projects posted. And I think that would probably be the best place.
[00:36:04.523] Kent Bye: Great. Well, thank you so much for joining me here today. And I look forward to whatever comes next.
[00:36:10.820] Drash: Yeah. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
