5 HN users recommended this demo6 months2014–2020score 7
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Repeatedly cited as an inspiring demo of what programming in VR could look like, which led some commenters to buy headsets.
Brian Peiris demonstrates RiftSketch, a web app where you write JavaScript with Three.js while wearing an Oculus Rift and watch the world around you change live. It runs on Firefox builds with WebVR.
“this was an impressive demo of someone coding their environment in the Rift.” (HN, 2015)
I think the less cynical answer is that HTC often has good ideas for physical devices but then often fails to follow through and iterate well. They're also just struggling as a company in general. But damn, so I 1000% agree with being bummed about it not being the hackers headset. I preordered the Vive because of a VR video of a guy programming the environment he was in at the moment: [this video] I would love to use a VR IDE some day.
Inspired the commenter to preorder a headset for VR programming.
Part 2: That was right about when Google Cardboard hit. That was 2014? I saw it during a Google I/O livestream and just so happened to have a few lenses left over from some still-photography experiments involving lasers and... never mind, another thing that went nowhere, I just had some lenses around. I quit watching the Google I/O stream and immediately hacked together a new cardboard box viewer with the lenses. Saw Versailles, which I have never been to, but I have been to Linderhof Palace in Bavaria, which is modelled after Versailles. Saw the Galapagos, where my wife and I had just spent our honeymoon about a year or so before. I immediately saw the experience was closer on the spectrum to really being somewhere than it was to seeing it on TV. So I'm sitting there, this cardboard box in my hand, this powerful smartphone in my hand, thinking to myself "I have to do this, I have to make these things". But all I knew was C# and JavaScript. Unity was garbage at the time. It's still garbage, but also back then. I had tried my hand at native app development and just didn't have the patience for Xcode or Android Studio. So I started hacking with Three.js and JavaScript. I ended up making the first JavaScript API for VR, releasing the first version about a month before the first announcements of WebVR. Then I saw RiftSketch ( [this video] ). It blew my mind. Started chatting with people. Brian Pieris talked about wishing he could get syntax highlighting into the app, and complained ab
RiftSketch demo that inspired the commenter's WebVR work.
Yep. To glimpse the potential for this, people should check out Peiris's demo vid: [this video] If anyone is interested in working on something like this, there's a very small community germinating in [link]
What I want (and I suspect we'll have due to gaming) is super high resolution Oculus, imagine programming in an environment where your screens can be tiled onto a sphere and moved and re-ordered arbitrarily. Could do something very interesting with that :). [this video] Imagine what we could do in 10 years with ^ if the technology takes off this time.
Example of programming in VR with screens in a 3D space.
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