I’m leading a VR development studio, but the truth is I’ve been navigating a series of epic career learning curves that have taken me far outside of my comfort zone, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Mainstreet, Mall or Modem

On my quest to start sharing more about our process and lessons learned on the virtual frontier, I thought I’d start with a bit of background on how I arrived here in the first place.

I studied and practiced architecture, but I’ve been fascinated with virtual technologies as far back as I can remember. In fact, my architectural thesis project in grad school (image above) focused on how VR and digital technologies would someday revolutionize architecture — specifically retail architecture. This was 17 years ago, when VR was very expensive, and largely inaccessible, but the brilliant pioneers at work innovating in this field were demonstrating the massive potential. It was only a matter of time before VR would find a way to mainstream.

Like so many other physical manifestations, from music to books and beyond, I believe buildings are subject to a similar digital transcendence. It’s already happening in a pretty big way, and this is just the beginning of a major architectural transformation that might take another decade or two to fully surface, but I digress… I’m saving this interest for a future pivot, and almost certainly another epic learning curve to go with it.

I tried using Everquest to visualize architecture.

I had a level 47 Dark Elf Shadow Knight in Everquest, but spent most of my time wandering around, exploring the environments. What I really wanted to do was import my own architectural models to explore them inside the game.

If they could have such elaborate dungeons and forts to explore in Everquest, with people from all around the world working together in the game virtually, why couldn’t the same technology also be used to visualize a new construction project, with the architect, building owner, and construction team exploring or collaborating on the design together?

This quest to visualize architecture in a real-time world became a ‘first principle’ in my career path that I’ve been chasing ever since.

I met my amazing and tremendously patient wife, Kandy, in grad school, and after studying architecture together in Europe and graduating, we practiced architecture for some time before starting our own firm, Crescendo Design, focused on eco-friendly, sustainable design principles.

Then one day in 2006, I read an article in Wired about Second Life — a massively multi-player world where users could create their own content. Within an hour, I was creating a virtual replica of a design we had on the boards at the time. I had to use the in-world ‘prims’ to build it, but I managed.

I was working in a public sandbox at the time, and when I had the design mostly finished, I invited the client in to explore it. They had 2 young kids, who were getting a huge kick out of this watching over their parent’s shoulders as they walked through what could soon be their new home.

The Naked Lady, the Sheriff Bunny, and Epic Learning Curve #1.

We walked in the front door, when suddenly a naked woman showed up and started blocking the doorways. I reported her to the ‘Linden’ management, and a little white bunny with a big gold sheriff’s badge showed up and kicked her out. “Anything else I can help with?” Poof.. the bunny vanished and we continued our tour. That’s when I realized I needed my own virtual island (and what an odd place Second Life was).

But then something amazing happened that literally changed my career path, again.

I left one of my houses in that public sandbox overnight. When I woke up in the morning and logged in, someone had duplicated the house to create an entire neighborhood — and they were still there working on it.

Architectural Collaboration on Virtual Steroids

I walked my avatar, Keystone Bouchard, into one of the houses and found a group of people speaking a foreign language (I think it was Dutch?) designing the kitchen. They had the entire house decorated beautifully.

One of the other houses had been modified by a guy from Germany who thought the house needed a bigger living room. He was still working on it when I arrived, and while he wasn’t trained in architecture, he talked very intelligently about his design thinking and how he resolved the new roof lines.

I was completely blown away. This was architectural collaboration on virtual steroids, and opened the door to another of the ‘first principle’ vision quests I’m still chasing. Multi-player architectural collaboration in a real-time virtual world is powerful stuff.

Steve Nelson, Jon Brouchoud, and Carl Bass delivering Keynote at Autodesk University 2006

One day Steve Nelson’s avatar, Kiwini Oe, visited my Architecture Island in Second Life and offered me a dream job designing virtual content at his agency, Clear Ink, in Berkeley, California. Kandy and I decided to relocate there from Wisconsin, where I enjoyed the opportunity to build virtual projects for Autodesk, the U.S. House of Representatives, Sun Microsystems and lots of other virtual installations. I consider that time to be one of the most exciting in my career, and it opened my eyes to the potential for enterprise applications for virtual worlds.

Wikitecture

I started holding architectural collaboration experiments on Architecture Island. We called it ‘Wikitecture.’ My good friend, Ryan Schultz, from architecture school suggested we organize the design process into a branching ‘tree’ to help us collaborate more effectively.

Studio Wikitecture was born, and we went on to develop the ‘Wiki Tree’ and one of our projects won the Founder’s Award and third place overall from over 500 entries worldwide in an international architecture competition to design a health clinic in Nyany, Nepal.

These were exciting times, but we were constantly faced with the challenge that we weren’t Second Life’s target audience. This was a consumer-oriented platform, and Linden Lab was resolutely and justifiably focused on growing their virtual land sales and in-world economy, not building niche-market tools to help architects collaborate. I don’t blame them — more than 10 years after it launched, it still has a larger in-world economy of transactions of real money than some small countries.

We witnessed something truly extraordinary there — something I haven’t seen or felt since. Suffice it to say, almost everything I’ve done in the years since have been toward my ultimate goal of someday, some way, somehow, instigating the conditions that gave rise to such incredible possibilities. We were onto something big.

Epic Learning Curve #2. Unity, Maya, and C# code.

When the recession hit, I went on my own as a solo contractor and we moved back to Wisconsin to be closer to family when our daughter was born. The Unity engine was just starting to gain traction, so I decided to jump in early. I learned Maya to build 3D content, and a bit of C# for interactivity. This combined skillset would give me a lot more flexibility to build applications specifically suited to the client’s needs.

This was another epic learning curve, but I managed to learn just enough to be dangerous, and was able to survive the recession as a solo developer building virtual content for enterprise clients.

Along came Oculus Rift.

Then one day, it happened. I think it was my friend Chris Collins who first told me about it. Palmer Luckey’s now famous Kickstarter campaign for a VR headset went live, and trustworthy industry veterans are saying it’s the real deal. This was the moment I had been waiting for, and I eagerly signed up as one of the first backers.

During the many impatient months waiting for Oculus DK1 to ship, I prepared Unity project files with architectural models and the OVR controller. I started posting these early builds publicly through the Oculus subreddit just in case someone who had early access to a Rift could try it out and tell me what it was like. My very first experience in my DK1 was inside an architectural Revit model, and I’ll never forget it.

Epic Learning Curve #2. Let’s start a VR development company!

Mind blown, Kandy and I started Arch Virtual in 2014, focused on using VR to solve real world problems. So began another epic learning curve — the one we’re still on to this day.

I love it, I have no regrets, and I’d do this work for free if I could. But life on the virtual frontier isn’t always easy.

Up next: The Wisdom of Virtual Insecurity

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