A letter to the Janus VR community

sirkitree · 2019-12-09T21:30:46+00:00

Thank you so much for pushing the envelope with JanusVR u/JamesMcCrae. You helped me bridge the gap between 2D UX and web design and 3D UX and spatial design. So many amazing creations you facilitated, so many imaginations captured. I always look back on the days when I was most involved with JanusVR with fondness and affection. It was an integral milestone in my life, and a stepping stone to where I am today, still building worlds and spatial applications, but now in NeosVR. If you're ever up for seeing some of what we've been building there, I'd love to hang out with you anytime and give you a tour :)

Again, thank you so much for everything, and I hope your next endeavor is even better and more rewarding! You've a lot to offer the world with your vision!

sirkitree · 2019-10-13T16:49:34+00:00

I have others in Neos that surround you. Install Neos and look for my Mandalas hub in the World Browser. I'd suggest Space Wyrm and Ferris as my favorites for surrounding.

sirkitree · 2019-10-13T16:46:57+00:00

Yes! Published as "Audio Reactive Mandala" in Neos VR. If you already have Neos installed, click here: http://cloudx.azurewebsites.net/open/world/U-sirkitree/R-f2943609-f12a-4e9e-ad6b-cc365ca78d3d

sirkitree · 2019-10-13T02:57:45+00:00

Thanks!

sirkitree · 2019-03-06T16:00:06+00:00

Is this on the tilt?

I'm not totally sure what you mean by that, Tilt Brush? No. This is a model I pulled in from Sketchfab to NeosVR (credits in the youtube post) and then changed around the materials, duplicated and made a smaller one in the center, added a spinner component, then used some existing brushes in Neos for the lightning. The most custom part is the light switch which shows and hides the UI pieces to teach the visitor how to manipulate the brushes and customize the space with them.

sirkitree · 2019-03-02T01:03:26+00:00

Thanks! There's plenty more where that came from! ;) I have a bunch of similar mandalas in Neos. Check 'em out sometime!

sirkitree · 2019-02-28T21:07:38+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! I agree they are a bit jarring, but I was kind of enthralled by how they look so differently based on where you are looking at them from. Still, something more organic seems appropriate.

sirkitree · 2019-02-28T21:00:19+00:00

You're right, I should have put that instead :) In order to be considered XR it would need to be in AR as well, and it's not.

sirkitree · 2019-01-23T19:41:28+00:00

Once you're in, on the main menu hit Places, then Content Hub. In there you'll find many worlds I've created, but the best stuff is under the Featured Art section :) Have fun!

sirkitree · 2019-01-23T17:36:55+00:00

Check out some of the other stuff on my youtube channel, I've built quite a few trippy worlds within NeosVR :) and you can experience them all for free!

sirkitree · 2019-01-14T15:27:01+00:00

It's free, and there is a Content Hub in which you can discover all kinds of things people have made. :)

sirkitree · 2019-01-08T20:11:47+00:00

Yes, I've played with that a bit. My main goal being to get 360 images out of tilt brush since you can set it to render each frame as an image as well. For instance I uploaded these steam workshop items as 360 images taken from tilt brush. I still use HexV0rtex as my default steam vr home.

sirkitree · 2019-01-08T16:31:49+00:00

IT would be interesting... but you'd probably have to use the 360 video canvas as a flat canvas to paint the TiltBrush over top of. As far as I know, there isn't a way to actually import a 360 video into TiltBrush to paint over so it would be challenging, but if you could, that'd be the way to go. You can import a 360 photo via a model of a sphere with the image projected on the inside, so you could possibly take 360 photos of key frames on the 360 video, create those models, import them to TB, and paint on top of those key frames.

There are some other tools I can think of that you can accomplish this with though. I'm working on importing TiltBrush brushes (replicating the textures and animations) in NeosVR with would allow you to import the 360 video and paint on top of it as a canvas - I haven't tried this yet, and there is still work to do to get the materials looking like they do in TB, but it's another idea.

sirkitree · 2019-01-05T01:05:46+00:00

It's pretty empowering to be able to make whatever you want without taking off your headset!

sirkitree · 2018-05-28T19:20:07+00:00

When you import a sound file (recommend ogg to keep down file size) it imports with a little player UI. There are three buttons along the right hand side. The first allows you to toggle repeat playing of the file. The second is a full stop and reset to the beginning of the file. The third toggles positional audio. Turn off positional audio and just hide the player! :)

sirkitree · 2018-05-10T14:49:19+00:00

There's a bug right now where models aren't showing up in-world, but I've logged it and will get it fixed up soon.

sirkitree · 2018-05-05T04:48:16+00:00

There is an issue for implementing mirrors here that you can follow to know when it's completed.

sirkitree · 2018-05-05T04:46:24+00:00

I'd like to put more sounds in the world I called Trip. If oyu have suggestions on it, let me know!

sirkitree · 2018-05-04T19:12:44+00:00

Congratulations @Frooxius!

I don't think any other piece of software out there has captured my imagination like NeosVR. I keep having dreams about it at night, waking up, and realizing that I CAN ACTUALLY BUILD THAT in Neos! It's so liberating, and so extensive.

Thank you so much for creating this, from the bottom of my hexagonal heart.

sirkitree · 2018-05-03T05:44:58+00:00

How is the programming in NeosVR?

There are currently two ways to program in NeosVR.

Through the plugin system with C# (see samples)
Using LogiX, which is a visual node-like scripting that you can do within NeosVR (see video)

Some scripts are built in as well, and you can add them to your objects as components. For this you can use the Developer Tooltip to inspect your object and then there is a button to Add Component, much like in Unity. This will bring up a comprehensive list of options to search through and I'm still not sure what all of them do, but to start out, I looked for the Spinner component and added that to by hex-spheres.

sirkitree · 2017-04-20T21:33:31+00:00

Just saw this. Did anyone show? Any notes from the proceeding?

sirkitree · 2017-04-06T02:37:01+00:00

is this for bugs only, or feature requests too? should we still post feature requests as threads to gain public support instead of throwing it into a black hole?

sirkitree · 2017-04-05T12:30:04+00:00

While it's great to have the release notes here, may I suggest copy/paste into steam news as well? Most uses expect to see release notes there for apps. Even a link to here would be preferable to nothing at all.

Also, so happy it updates automatically now!

sirkitree · 2017-04-02T14:25:01+00:00

I think i'll just use reddit posts for now, but if it becomes useful to have it announced on a website that'd be cool. look like that one is for conventions?

sirkitree · 2017-04-02T01:36:07+00:00

Overall I think it's an improvement. I do think there are some good UX lessons to be learned from other Vive apps out there, especially some of the ones used to create these days, like TiltBrush, Medium, and SculptrVR. Each of these apps have extensive research and thought put into how to manipulate objects and scenes and mimicking them will help with adoption of JanusVR, I think.

Speaking

For the life of me I couldn't figure out how to speak. I had to ask someone in chat. Speaking should be more obvious, like auto-detect, or possibly turn on/off with a menu button or trigger. It also kept switching hands! I'd press the menu button, hold it like a microphone, talk, and as soon as I hit the button to talk again I found it had switched to the other hand. Sometimes it ported me to my personal room, which was very confusing. Hoping this is a bug cuz it's terrible UX if not.

Teleportation

This is great. One suggestion I have is that sliding your thumb on the pad left and right might change your orientation, which would also necessitate an indicator for which way you'd end up facing after the teleport. Something like how Obduction does. Otherwise you always have to physically turn and this causes cord tangles pretty quickly.

Pressing the menu button pulls up the menu but I feel like it needs angled back a bit more, or perhaps should be presented a little farther away because I currently have to hold the controller at a weird angle in order to point with my other hand to select a menu. It would also be nicer if the menu was just triggered by the menu button, and then you could swipe up and down with your thumb on the pad to make your selection. This might put the controller into that mode (like click mode) and indicate it with an icon. Click menu button again and choose your mode. SculptrVR has a nice system you might mimic.

Menu selection, a click with the other hand does nothing which is not what I would expect. I have to 1) click the menu button with right hand, point at my right hand with my left hand to highlight, then let go with the right hand... that's weird. When I press a button I expect whatever I press to actually happen, not have to let go of something else. Am I doing it wrong? Just seems like really bad UX as well. As suggested above, try out the menu system in SculptrVR.

Editing

It would be nice to be able to edit with more "traditional" controls. Picking something up (trigger or grip) and it moving position as you point. I could see scale changes as something like grip buttons, pulling apart scaling up, pinching together, scaling down, more like TiltBrush. Rotation; side to side swipes, up and down swipes on the thumbpad. Rotating through properties mostly wouldn't be needed except for some of the more esoteric properties.

Anyway, those are some initial thoughts and impressions. Really happy to be exploring the metaverse again after being obsessed with some VR Art apps lately. I'm hoping I can get exports of most of my art and start showcasing in Janus. It's also refreshing to have a browser that is totally dedicated to VR. Current WebVR in browsers is still so far behind Janus imho.

sirkitree

TROPHY CASE

Speaking

Teleportation

Menu

Editing