Welcome to our weekly feature where we ask some of the industry’s leading developers and personalities 20 questions.

This week we feature Daniel Pots one of the developers of Darkfield VR

State Your Name:

Hi I’m Daniel

What is your current Job / Role ?

I’m working in a team of three on DarkfieldVR, doing pretty much everything to get the job done, mostly programming but also texturing and a little bit modelling.

What are you most famous for ?

My cooking is pretty good people tell me I’m too sarcastic J. Besides that I don’t think I’m famous to most people.

What is currently on the desk in front of you ?

A very old keyboard, tinfoil to help with the bad Wi-Fi connection, an empty can of cashews, a glass of “Federweißer” and a lot of IT crap.

What was your first VR experience ?

My colleague Mark couldn’t wait for DK1 so we build our own: Nexus 7 + MTBS Lenses + Cardboard in which the lenses were shipped = Hackulus. We tried Tuscany and I was flashed immediately!

Did you feel any sim sickness or do you ever feel any sim sickness ?

Yes. I get dizzy even when I play a shooter on the TV for too long so I would say I’m vulnerable for it. But it gets better. The judder in some DK2 games give me a hard time but with stable 75 fps, low persistence and timewarp activated I can play for a long time.

What’s the longest amount of time you have spent in VR in one play session ?

I think it was 20 Minutes playing Darkfield with DK2, DK1 only 5 minutes or so. As developer you do not play long sessions, because when I see a bug (which is often), I immediately stop to fix it. When I go on, I forget about it 🙂

What’s the strangest experience you have had with VR ?

My grandma tried the DK1. She’s ill and must stay at home. Although never had any experience with computers or video games at all, she rode the riftcoaster and actually believed she was there. Now she asks me all the time “Do you bring these goggles with you? Can I see my old birthplace?”. She’s totally hooked J. That’s when I thought the first time VR will be ready for the masses.

What’s the funniest experience you have had with VR ?

The funniest experiences I have when someone else tries the Headset and has to evade or gets shocked. VanguardV an Don’t let go did the trick for me. I could not stop laughing.

What game or hardware device are you currently working on ?

We’re working on Darkfield VR, a space shooter for VR.

This is our first game. Although we started with team deathmatch (I thought it was easier to implement network-wise), we had coop gameplay in mind from the start. But with mission based coop comes a bunch of tasks we can’t do ourselves to make it nice. We hope to raise enough money in our kickstarter campaign to get more atmosphere in the game, like refining our background story, voice acting for the characters and stuff like that.

Do you have a release date in mind for your project ?

We’re planning to get everything done in summer 2015. Hopefully Oculus or Sony are ready as well.

What is the biggest surprise you have had since you started to work in VR ?

I like the passion of all the people related to this field. For example I was at cologne VR meet up during gamescom this year and thought “hey a bunch of nerds sitting downstairs and chatting about stuff”. But I was blown away by the enthusiasm, professionalism and passion of the event. At least 100 people where there, bringing their own Rigs, created and presented their own experiences in their free time besides the job. I think this is representative for the whole scene.

If you could only choose one game from your childhood to be remade for VR what would it be ?

Oh I think this happens already. It’s “Schleichfahrt”, called “Archimedean Dynasty” in the US. It’s my all-time favorite. No game I played after that had sucked me into his world after that. “Aquanox: Deep Descent” is currently in the works and hopefully they jump on the VR train. You hear that, Nordic Games and Digital Arrow?

Besides games what do you think will be the most useful application for VR ?

I see a lot of useful applications for VR. From seeing my grandma visiting her birth place in google street view over hotels letting people see their room before arrival to car manufactures using VR in their CAD software to walk around a future car.

What advice would you give to people on how to get into VR development ?

Buy a dev kit and start developing! The fact that you’re working on the edge of science, facing problems that no one else has thought about yet is thrilling! You have to invent completely new mechanics for things that are standard in today’s games world. That’s very interesting and challenging.

I started developing myself with many video tutorials, reading docs and just trying something out. Also, media informatics studies helped a lot with the mathematics.

What is your favourite VR related movie ?

Hmm now that I think about it, I did not see many movies with this topic. Just the Matrix 🙂

If you had a crystal ball and could see 10 years into the future what developments in VR do you think will have happened?

VR has so much potential so I’m a little bit afraid of the “Facebook future”. Seeing young people running around with their smartphones and tablets, never went into the woods building a booth out of dry wood or playing hide and seek worries me and makes me realize that the world spins faster and faster. Hopefully VR will not determine our live but integrate into it as a nice add-on which we will use responsibly.

Outside of VR what do you do to relax ?

I see friends, sit in parks getting sunburns, driving the motorcycle, playing guitar, party to drum’n’bass

What’s your current favourite VR experience that you have not developed your self ?

To be fair I do not have the time to look into all the experiences that’re out there so I did not have an overview over the latest ones. “The Cave” was nice! VanguardV has great art design and runs smoother than silk.

Sum up how you feel about Virtual Reality in 6 words or less ?

I’m lovin it 🙂

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