How HoloLens inspired one developer to start making games

Matt Larson brings a 1990s gaming world to life with mixed reality in the Titan MR application.

Lifelong gamer Matt Larson had never considered making games of his own. But that all changed once he got hold of the HoloLens.

“I’ve always been interested in games as a consumer,” he says, “But I never thought I could make my own. Now the tools are widely accessible, so it’s definitely possible to dive in and start making something really interesting.”

Considering the success of his first mixed reality (MR) app, “really interesting” is a bit of an understatement. Titan MR was recently a finalist for the Windows Developer Reality Mixer of the Year award, which sought out the best apps that blended digital and real-world content in creative ways that demonstrated the platform’s potential.

That’s all the more impressive when you consider it was Larson’s first ever MR application, and only took four months to make — pretty quick, considering some games take years. Larson’s secret? Pressure.

“I entered a programming contest shortly after I started working with the Unity programming language,” says the Madison, Wisconsin-based developer. “That held my feet to the fire, because I had to get it done by then. Nothing focuses the mind like a deadline.”

Shooting for the moon

While the development process was relatively straightforward, Larson did have to change the application’s focus quite early on. At first, the idea was to place the user into a space station on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. You would then be able to explore the base, go up and down levels, and look out of the porthole at the beauty of the lunar surface outside.

About a month in, he realized the scope was too big, and he scaled down the indoor elements and beefed up the outside environments. The result is more like a flight simulator with the focus on outdoor exploration.

So why Titan? The moon holds a fascination for Larson because, geographically, it’s very similar to Earth — it has lakes, sand dunes, mountains, and other elements typical of our planet.

He read up on it, citing the book Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets by Charles Wohlforth and Amanda R. Hendrix as a main source of inspiration. “I also read a research paper from the early 2000s where the author imagines rainfall on Titan,” he says. “You’d have these gigantic, marble-shaped raindrops falling slowly like snow. I found it fascinating. It’s a really cool topic.”

Working in scientific visualization, Larson has always been interested in combing science and 3D visualizations. But when he picked up the HoloLens, he saw the potential to make something special.

A new universe of ideas

“HoloLens is a really interesting new way of experiencing content,” he says. “As with any new technology, it inspires all sorts of questions for developers, like what is a good user interface? How do you make those options available? How do users know where to find stuff in the room? It’s a really fun medium to work in.”

In fact, his enthusiasm for it actually poses a new problem. “As soon as I started playing with the platform, I came up with lots of ideas because it’s so new and exciting,” he says. “The problem is to just focus on the better ideas — it has so much potential, there’s no shortage of things you can do with it.”

A lifetime of playing games does have its rewards. Instead of rendering a whole new world in Titan MR, Larson used the technique of real-time ray tracing he first saw in the 1992 title Comanche: Maximum Overkill.

“Those complex landscapes are all being rendered in real-time,” he says. “I think it’s cool to bring back those old ideas with a new MR twist.”

Larson is excited for the near future, when more people have MR technology. And while VR has its appeal, he thinks MR offers the best of both worlds. “I like the fact that with MR, you’re still interacting with the real world,” he says, “and that you can still have conversations with people. VR can shut you off from the world. This world is fascinating to explore; it’s just nice to add in extra ways to interact.”

Get Titan MR in the Microsoft Store.