To VR, or Not to VR

Finally had time to sit down and look into getting the VR stuff working... and well, it's a lot more involved for today than I expected.

Thank goodness Travis Hoove was in today, cause I really had no idea where to begin with the headsets. Drexel has like, 3 different headsets, which can all be used for this potential project, but he really helped with directing me towards the hardware and software that is (probably) the best for my endeavors.

So the short of it is that he recommends I try out the Oculus Rift since it works best with making iterations on a project. He was highly recommending using the rift S, but Drexel doesn't have one (though he did offer me to try his personal headset). My notes on the conversation I had with him are on the bottom of my VR Notes

A consideration I didn't think about (or at least don't remember thinking about) is that if I wanted to do wings in this project, I may run into motion sickness issues. So hypothetically, I'll be thinking more about a tail or extra limbs. Though with wings, I can make a comparison to SAO's alfheim arc...

I keep forgetting that I don't know a lot of what I don't know. What I mean by this is that I probably am missing some information about setting up a VR headset/game/thing and just don't know about it. For instance, today, Travis made me aware that different headsets could have easier or harder times working on builds or that some are easier to develop for than others.

So now that I've been made aware of this, I want to try out VR in Unreal. I don't know if I'll have time to get some sort of build, but I'd at least like to try working in the VR development mode. I think it'll get me a better grasp of how the controls work for this specific headset.

Tangent 

I realized just now that I get anxious when Diefenbach tells me to get a build out. I imagine it's because of the experience I had in workshop 1. When I think about what's involved in getting a working build (whatever that means) and the amount of work I have to do myself, and the troubleshooting that'll come with whatever I need to do; it makes me want to cry. He has a point that we need to have something "tangible" to show for, but thus far, it hasn't felt like my time or my research has lent to this sort of result. When I do research with Nick, I read documentation, make notes, and then try stuff. When it doesn't work, I try to puzzle it out, then ask for advice, then rinse and repeat. For whatever reason I feel like that try stuff stage has been blocked for me in this class, even though this class totally is about all that.

I suppose it's because I feel that I need to have something to show every 2 weeks, whereas with Nick it's been very much more relax at what I show for myself until the end of the quarter. Or just the amount of information I'm dealing with is so overwhelming that I get overloaded and don't know if I should go right or left or up or back.

Both meetings with Diefenbach have made me feel like I know the direction I need to go in, but then when it gets down to it, nothing seems clear. Just overall, the direction with this class is so confusing.



Enough about my ranting, here's some link that I suspect will be needed later on:
Oculus Rift :Quick Start

Moving Forward:

The problem I've been faced with is that the majority of my courses decided wk10 was finals week, so honestly, research and testing hasn't been my priority. By Friday things will have settled down and I can focus my attention on testing out in a headset. Honestly not sure how to go about testing for this project, maybe just, build stuff? Or just have a basic scene to show for week 11. I don't feel as if the knowledge I currently have can produce even a broken scene of what I imagine. Maybe when I have time I'll see this project from a different perspective.