My VR Journey

2 Pieces of Science Fiction from the ‘70s and ‘80s laid the groundwork for my lifelong interest in world building. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams: a radio play on BBC Radio 4, and “Dream Park” by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes: novel about a holographic theme park. Specifically the characters of Slartibartfast the Magrathean World Designer, and Richard Lopez, the Gamemaster fascinated me, people who invested countless hours building worlds, designing coastlines, animating NPC behaviors, and crafting and controlling a reality that others got to experience. At first I was content with creating my own D&D campaigns for my friends, but once you get a taste it’s never enough.

At a lecture at Xerox PARC by Jaron Lanier of VPL Research about his “Reality Built for Two” system, that I learned about VR as the best way to realize this future. Within a few years I was working at Silicon Graphics, and made the jump to the VRML (Cosmo) group as their “World Builder”. This role was a combination of VR demo creator and technical support for important partners, as well as contributing to the VRML95 ACM specification and creating tools like the heavily used VRML1 to VRML2 converter. While I didn’t get to design any coastlines, I did design a few NPC behaviors and plenty of interactive scenes like a gravity simulation, and an umbrella world inspired by the artist Magritte.

Next I went to a tiny pre-launch startup called TiVo where the intense culture required that I wear a lot of hats. I worked as a Tools Engineer, Software Engineer, then a Prototyper, before moving to the design group as a Designer, and then a Design Manager. The whole time I was keeping up to speed with the world of 3D, and watching the rise of NVidia as a more powerful and much cheaper alternative to dedicated graphics workstations, as well as Blender as a free alternative to Maya.

In 2012 I was working as a Senior Designer at Samsung User Experience Center America in the Visual Display group when the Oculus Kickstarter re-ignited the world’s excitement about Virtual Reality. Once I got my hands on the Oculus, there was no going back. Just a few years later with the introduction of the Oculus GO and the Galaxy Gear VR, I decided it was time to start my own consulting practice for Virtual Reality.

In 2017 I had the opportunity to work with a small group of companies creating an immersive voice-chat-bot-based, conversational, guided meditation app for Android and Gear VR. This group was led by Media Tuners Inc and Geppetto Avatars, creating an app for a company called iWithin built around the self-help guru Nathan Cahill. I was initially responsible for the Unity front-end of the application including JSON-driven non-human and human animations with frame-accurate lip movements to match computer-generated voices, but my role grew to also include character design and animation. Geppetto Avatars went on to use that code as the basis of their core business, and Media Tuners still use a modified version of the app for demos of their technology.

In 2018 I combined my passion for interactive 3D lightshows with my newly gained knowledge of Oculus APIs and Unity to create Whirledelic, a psychedelic VR experience for Oculus Go, which I was able to publish (codes only) on the Oculus Store. Based on this success I was accepted as a solo participant into Oculus Launch Pad 2019, where I created Grabbity, an unpublished alternate-gravity juggling game. I spent some time as VR Artist in Residence at Circuit Launch hacker space in Oakland where I mentored junior developers and consulted with small business owners.

After the pandemic, I joined a small startup in New York named Transfr, as their first experience designer. I worked with the CEO transform their design approach, from one that was solely focused on pedogeological theory, into one that balanced educational outcomes with usability and memorable immersive experiences. After being promoted to Director of XR Design I worked with the Executive Producer to reduce the time to build these simulations by building an in-house XR design team consisting of hybrid designer-builders with a background in 3D experience design and enough Unity skills to build full educational simulations in concert with a single developer.

A shift in business direction at Transfr to focus on external contract design resources has left me looking for my next engagement. If you’re looking for a passionate design leader to help you build your dream, reach out and let’s talk.