Source
r/Vive•
ejrd

What should I ask college student programmers if I want them to be able to design VR simulations for my research team?

Hello!

I am a college professor who will be looking to hire a couple of students at my university to program virtual reality scenarios for a research project that I recently received funding for. The problem is that I am not a programmer. I don't really have much of an idea about what kinds of questions I should be asking applicants in order to make sure that they can do what I'll need them to do.

I will need them to construct relatively simplistic scenarios that are compatible with HTC Vive headsets. By "relatively simplistic" I mean 4-6 single areas/rooms with relatively basic graphical demands (we are not making a blockbuster game--or even a game at all).

What skill set should I look for? What should I ask students in order to make sure that I get a qualified bunch?

Posted Aug 1, 2016, 10:08 PM UTC · edited

88
Evan4000•

Hey! The software that you would use is Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) or Unity. Both are free to use and have an asset store where you can buy things to make your life easier. For creating an environment 3D modeling software would be used. The popular choices are Blender (free open source software), Autodesk maya, and 3ds max. If you have a Game Design program at your school that would be a good place to look for students or maybe an animation student.

To make programing easier UE4 has something called blueprints visual scripting. In the unity asset store playmaker is something similar for $45. For traditional programing UE4 uses C++ and unity uses C#.

I havn't used UE4 but started using unity 2 months ago. If you have access to an HTC vive I recommend trying unity and get the Steam VR plugin and VRTK from the asset store(all free). Its surprisingly easy after you get use to navigating the program you can get into an environment in minutes. :)

6
ejrdOP•

Thanks for the reply! This was extremely helpful.

1
caldera12345•

I am not a Vive developer, but I do have a mathematics masters and studied computer science. A friend of mine does Vive development in his spare time using a 3d graphics program called Unity. Check out https://www.htcvive.com/us/develop_portal/. From what I understand Unity is free and there is a HTC supported plugin that allows creating content to be not insanely hard. Unity is not a programming language perse, but a graphics thing. What about talking to some of the comp sci profs?

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ZuluboZulubo Productions | VERTIGO developer•

Unity's a game engine. It's a tool that handles the graphics side of things but also runs the code that you write in it. It also has many other features, like physics simulation

3
VR_NimaVR Sports - Smackitball•

And a game engine is a type of 3D graphics engine which is a type of IDE.

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derek_knochel•

This is also what I would suggest. Unity is almost certainly the easiest way to accomplish what you need out of this. Look for students in video game development if possible. If not, look for students who have used Unity before as a hobby. Odds are good that someone in the computer science department has at least played around with it. I'm a VR developer with no programming or computer science background, but I've taught myself Unity over the past several months. Getting up and running with this is really quite easy, things will only start to get complicated if you want things that are very complex or very specific. Any chance you could post what you find in your research? I'd love to see it. Best of luck to you!

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ejrdOP•

Thanks everyeone for your input! It was exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to hear.

Re: the project, it is a pilot study for a (hopefully) much larger project. Larger grants are pending (assuming our pilot shows us anything interesting). What we are investigating in the first phase of the study, is whether or not virtual experiments increase short and medium-term knowledge recall and transfer relative to thought experiments in the classroom.

There is interesting data that suggests that the answer is YES. Further work would then use those virtual experiments to re-examine a series of now famous 'thought experiment' paradigms.*

*We're talking things like the Trolley Problem, ticking time-bomb scenarios, prisoner's dilemmas, etc.

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kactusotpMay 0:50 Australia (struggled with ccs for 50 min) Paypal - GOT•

The most important question you can ask a programmer: "Tell me about the project you've worked on in your own time you are most proud of". If it opens they flood gates and they talk until they get self conscious, they are the sort of programmer you want to hire. If they haven't programmed out side of school, work or worse think computers/programmers are for geeks/just a job, avoid at all cost.

Regarding skills, unity is pretty much what you should look for. For a simple scene with basic vr controls and object manipulation you are looking 1-2 days for a competent programmer that has never used unity before. There are a number of tutorials and videos that will get them up to speed.

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