My first experience programming in VR was during a Hackathon in San Francisco. It was a SF VR Hackathon at Microsoft Reactor aimed at projects towards educating people about VR and AR devices; and introducing unique ideas focused towards VR/AR. It was at this hackathon where i came across a challenging environment of having to learn a new technology and implement an interesting experience for devices that i had been introduced to. I also had to face the hurdle of doing it in a team with no developers and having to deliver the final experience in less than 36 hours
The project I worked on for the hackathon was a Monterey Bay Deep Dive VR experience. The concept was introduced by Miek McCann, an Oceanographer at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who wanted to visualize the experience of an underwater Ocean Floor where their MBARI Remotely Operated Vehicle is used for navigation. Using the 3D model of the MBARI Remotely Operated Vehicle and his data about the underwater experience, I was able to implement an Ocean Floor Deep Dive experience focused towards VR headsets such as Samsung GearVR and Oculus Rift. I managed to implement the experience using Unity3D, Blender and C#
TANAY NIGAM 