Learning VR

With the advent of VR and AR as a design opportunity I thought I’d try sketching out some new VR designs to test out UI ideas. Surprisingly, the kind of click and draw tools I was expecting to find, don’t exisit. But everyone said Unity was easy to learn and the best tool for the job.

Okay. But the last time I really programmed (i.e., not writing simple JavaScript) was years ago.

After Downloading the tool, I quickly discovered how to add a 360 photo as a background. The next steps were easy:

• Drag the 360º photo into the “Assets” area
• Choose a texture type “Cubemap” and then for mapping select one that works best (Latitude-Longitude Layout) worked for my 360º photos
• Apply that.
• Next Right-click on “Assets” choose “Create > Material”
• Under shading, choose “Skybox/Cubemap”
• Select the Cubemap you just created.
• Drag the new skybox into the scene.

After that, in theory you have a space to create designs in.

Unfortunately, it still feels like using a typewriter to paint a picture. Ideally, virtual and augmented reality experiences would be created using something much more immersive, like Adobe’s Project Dali. Being able to directly manipulate the medium provides a more immediate way for designers to both find faults in the concept and discover ways to add surprising moments. (Jeff Veen had a great conversation, on his Presentable podcast, with Shahid Ahmad about this.)

Until then, I’ll stick to drawing my ideas in pencil on a curved sheet of paper.