Mobile VR Jam pitch: VR Speed Reader

Note: The original name of this project was VirtuaReader. Renamed because of confusion with other reading-related submissions.

Put this together yesterday with a lot of help from the folks at Metatron VR, especially Nate Eight, who came up with the original idea. I thought it’d be a relatively simple app to help me get started devving in this space, while also being novel and practical. Working on it now!

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Metatron and eVRydayVR present VR Speed Reader, an application for rapidly reading text documents in VR. Based on Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP), VR Speed Reader rapidly presents words from a document embedded in virtual space; this both limits eye movement and discourages bad habits like subvocalization (reading the text in your head) and regression (re-reading portions that were already read) which harm reading speed. Compared to screen-based RSVP apps like Spritz and Spreeder, VR Speed Reader makes more effective use of peripheral vision to provide essential context, and uses head tracking to provide a simple user interface that can be used to configure the reading rate without interrupting reading.

Job updates stuff

The last few months I was taking time off to explore what I really wanted to do. I ultimately decided that my passion lay in game dev and with the rise of consumer VR it looks more compelling than ever. As I’ve just run out of savings and I’m starting to dig into credit, I’m now in the process of seeking out job opportunities now in the VR space. I’m focused at the moment on temporary positions like contracts and internships as I don’t want to yet get wrapped up in a committed full-time position. I updated my LinkedIn, did a post on /r/OculusJobs on reddit, completed the Unity Roll a Ball tutorial (see online demo!), and got advice from some friends on some ways to market myself.

I still have a lot to do! I need to build my online portfolio, get my work with the light field compression stuff online, build out a website and get my resume and stuff on it, make progress on my Mobile VR Jam entry, so much to do!

My completed Roll a Ball tutorial, deployed using Unity 5’s new WebGL support! Gonna adapt this to a VR version too.

VR Jams!

I’m participating in two VR jams now! That’s literally 100% more VR jams than yesterday.

In collaboration with the Metatron VR folks (especially Nate Eight), I’m working on a Mobile VR Jam entry for Gear VR called VirtuaReader which will be a speed reading app similar to Spritz or Spreeder that exploits VR to provide additional document context in your peripheral vision and a simple UI based on head tracking. We submitted the 500-word pitch last night.

I’m also officially planning to attend the room-scale VR Jam for HTC Vive where I’ll get both my first room-scale VR dev experience and my first experience with the Vive! Owlchemy Labs (developers of AaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome) set this up and they are obviously every bit as awesome as their game.

What, a blog? That can’t be right!

I’m a software developer by training, but so far have been spending most of time in the virtual reality space in reading/learning and evangelism, like my YouTube channel, which currently has about 300 videos and 9000 subscribers. While I think evangelism is fun and important, I’m now starting to get more seriously into VR software development and game dev in general, a passion that started when I was a child and which I then proceeded to ignore for like 15 years (oops). The folks on the top secret Skype group for VR developers (which may or may not exist) suggested I create a development blog where I could document such trivialities as my learning experience, my daily trials, and illustrated articles on VR such as thought pieces and guides. As I’m a fan of brevity and posting on a whim, don’t be surprised to see enormous variation in the length of my posts. Without any further ado, let’s get posting!