Aaron Lemke of Unello Design talks about the relaxing VR experiences that he created in order to create a counterpoint to the flood of horror games that were released on Oculus Share. He talks about his first VR experiences that he created including Eden River, Waking Man, Fire Breather and Lunadroid 237.

He talks about updating Eden River to a full-fledged game, and asking for feedback on Reddit and the Oculus development forums. He’ll be adding a endless mode, options to have more interaction and less interaction, and a more intuitive interaction of leaning to steer that will be possible with positional tracking with the DK2.

Aaron is a musician, and he talks about how music is at the core of all that he does in VR. He found VR to be a really great outlet for his ambient music.

Finally, he talks about some of the medical applications for VR including distraction therapy for pain modulation, and well as for other types of physical therapy for stroke victims. He also sees that one of the big open problems is implementing more sophisticated audio reflections and realistic binaural audio in 3D spaces.

Reddit discussion here.

TOPICS

0:00 – Intro. Started as a musician. How he started into VR. Didn’t know how to program. Bought a Rift.

1:05 – First VR experiences that he created. Firebreather. Use microphone to measure how much fire comes out of your mouth. Waking Man kind of like a meditation game that would echo the microphone. Started Luna Droid, and then made Eden River and went back to finish Luna Droid.

2:26 – Relaxing intention. Played a lot of horror games, and they’re very terrifying. Wanted to make a counter point to horror games. Easier to stand out in the VR market

3:40 – Transforming Eden River from a demo into a full-fledged conference. Went to Valve’s Dev Days conference to get onto Steam. Get feedback from Reddit community about what they want from Eden River. Wanted an endless mode. Some people wanted more interactivity, and others wanted no interactivity. Doing both. Fly with animals. Graphics update.

6:00 – Motion sickness. Heard from a lot of people that it doesn’t make people sick. Acceleration and slowing down. Looking around without low persistence can cause sickness

7:10 – New DK2 controls allow you to lean to steer, which is more intuitive.

8:02 – What’s next? Eden River HD will be on Steam once he gets his DK2. Opera Nova will be like a Fantasia for VR

9:02 – Everything he does is driven by music. Always made ambient music, and didn’t have an outlet for his music. Music is at the core at all of his games. Doing a musical for VR

10:18 – Going to change all aspects of media and design. Will change architecture, and no longer use toothpicks for models to show clients. Get feedback from client and design it in realtime, and get internal design happening before building the building. Games and education will be huge, and education will be like recess. Getting more interested in medical applications of VR. Showed a doctor, and wanted to use VR for therapy. Physical therapy. Take movement from people who have had a stroke and amplify their movements in VR. Pain modulation with distraction therapy.

13:58 – Audio is really important. Need to model reflections of audio. Virtual haircut and binaural audio can give you a lot of presence and depth, and accurate audio will be key in the future.

Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio