VR Internship with Hello Communications

13 January 2018

Categories: C# | Unity | XR

What an incredible opportunity!

After contacting Hello directly, I was lucky enough to secure a flexible internship with them, the first week having just passed. Jamie Gallagher, my 'boss', gave me the log in details to one of their PCs and handed me an Oculus Rift and gave me a week to essentially get to grips with the device and see what I could make!

What I got up to

I began by looking at a previous project they had made with a professional developer that made use of Newton VR (which can be found in the Unity asset store) which does most of the setup/scripting for VR interactions for you. From this, I created my own project with a simple forest environment (from the asset store again) that the player could teleport around in by selecting buttons using the touch controllers. At some of these points, I placed a simple canvas image which could be changed with arrows. The idea for this was to be some kind of virtual art studio for an artist to display their work. Jamie is an artist in his free time so I thought this may appeal to him.

At the end of my second day, Jamie had a look and we both started brainstorming for something else we could do with VR. One feature he did like was the method of interacting with buttons using Newton VR. This was a type of gaze system where lines are drawn from each touch controller to where the gaze of the headset falls (i.e. on a button). His interest fell on to how those lines could be moved about, like having string attached to a point on a wall and moving it around with your arms. We since came up with a game idea with this to do with manipulating those lines to avoid obstacles so this is what I worked on for the final three days. I will go into more detail on this when I have discussed NDAs with Jamie, but the idea is promising!

My future with Hello

The team at Hello really liked what I created during that week, and as a result I've been invited back any time. I intend on taking up the offer over the summer, which is a job I only dreamed of having as a full time student. Additionally, Jamie has now made links to UWE Games Technology and the second half of the Play and Games module will now have heavy influences from Hello. I'll say more on this when I know more!