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During a Renderman forum at Siggraph last year (“Stupid Renderman Tricks”) a Google VR engineer named Mach Kobayashi presented a method for rendering 360 degree stereoscopic  images using Pixar’s Renderman. At the time, I thought it was less “stupid trick” and more “awesome technique” that I couldn’t wait to try. Recently, I tried it out on a 3D scene of NASA’s earth science satellites. Standard render: 360 degree st

I just recently finished my submission for the Intel Perceptual Computing Challenge. I was selected to participate in the “Open Innovation” category after I submitted a proposal to build something that combined the gesture recognition capabilities of the Creative Interactive Gesture camera with the virtual reality capability of the Oculus Rift.  They sent me a fancy new camera and after poking around for

This is the basic game demo I recently submitted to the official Oculus VR Game Jam Great Scott, Asteroids!  is a simple space shooter.  You sit in the gunner seat of a large spaceship, and you are tasked with clearing an asteroid field to avoid damage to your ship. Controls are simple – use your head tracking turret to aim and fire shots.  (xbox controller trigger, or spacebar on keyboard) I was hoping to take this

It’s been a crazy several weeks! In a nutshell: – I released an early build of a Unity game I have been working on for the Oculus Rift (vrTANKS) about a week before SIGGRAPH. The response has been incredible – it’s great to see so many people enjoying my game.  I even got a mention in PCmag!  I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback, so hopefully I can carve out some time to work on a few of the more popular s

I’d like to share an early build of a game/demo for the Oculus Rift that I’ve been working on for the past couple weeks. vrTANKS is an arcade-style tank simulator. Your goal is to destroy as many enemy tanks as you can before being destroyed yourself.  Pilot your tank using an Xbox controller or keyboard – tank weapons fire in the direction you are looking. vrTANKS was built from the ground up specifically for the Ri

I’m about 4 weeks in with the Oculus Rift, so I thought this may be a good time for an update. On Motion Sickness In my ‘First Impressions’ post, I voiced my concerns about motions sickness in the Rift.  My first experience wearing the Rift was awesome, but also very nauseating, so I had some real concerns about the technology moving forward.   I’m very happy to report that I’m doing much better now, and I can handle

After much anticipation, my Oculus Rift (virtual Reality headset) finally showed up! Initial thoughts: “This thing is AWESOME,” which was almost immediately followed by “I’m going to puke.” The good First off, the Oculus team spared no expense when it came to packaging.  The unit arrived in a custom, foam-lined travel case, complete with just about every type of cable you can think of.  Unboxing left me giddy with an