The VR programming system I really wanted to make while I was at Facebook was heavily inspired by Vi Hart and M Eiffler's research. There were many other sources and a lot of first principals design but they're still some of the only people really exploring this space. https://theartofresearch.org/combination-physical-and-virtual-tools-for-spatial-computation/ I like to think my system was a little more pragmatic but a lot of the "crazy" ideas that got vetoed by ux designers and engineering managers are viewed as defining or important features (non-linear execution, spatial primitives, gesture to objects). I had no AR specific ideas but I had some long term plans for extending the system to AR. It's hard to sell research to a big company product team though.

VR is such a blast! Wish I was doing more! So much to explore. Just reading your paragraphs. ideas come to mind: (1) better experiences use eyes for finding things but do not require them for using things, (2) corollary, using gaze to select a target while holding the object that is going to act on it, (3) allowing for sub-selection of target attributes by dynamically exploding them. That amounts to the VR equivalent of, say, radial submenus or popup inspectors, expanding drag targets. What with headset focal distance, manipulation beyond arm's length works out better than close work. I mean for it it still be direct, just with, I don't know, giant virtual hands...

Definitely agree. I really wanted something close to a radial menu and pitched variants on of it. Also wanted a dynamic exploding UI (hierarchical zoomable UI in VR) in order to manage complexity. Ideal focal distance vs. ideal manipulation distance is always a problem in VR and leads to a lot of UI that is optimized for text readability at ideal focal length rather than controller interaction. This was kind of the reason why the Horizon UI turned into a big floating menu. The funny thing is for some reason they didn't want laser pointer interaction, so we ended up with a UI that had to be in arms reach but usually couldn't be interacted with at the ideal distance either...

Hey @Scott Anderson I'm also interested in programming in VR! Let me know if you (or anyone else) would be interested in doing a VR meetup to chat about it, could be fun :-)

@irvin interested in a VR chat.

Cool @wtaysom I created this Doodle, but if none of the times work let me know, my schedule is relatively flexible after next week/new year https://doodle.com/poll/qb3hubq2fid4ktyu

I would try Hubs, but living in the countryside with sometimes kb/s up, it might be extra interesting.

Sorry I forgot to get back to you @wtaysom I'll be online and will check slack at 12 EST tomorrow (Dec 21) in case you can still make it otherwise let's plan for Jan 4

I’ll make a point to set up Hubs. I’m 13 hours ahead of you.

Ok great, let me know when you're ready

In a minute...

sure np, link code is 060719

Oh, I was just saying, "now we stare at each other as we figure out how to get out."

I can't make January 4th but I'll definitely join if there is another meetup