I have a goal of becoming a VR developer within a year. What is the most effective roadmap for this?

Hi everyone I wish to become a VR developer to be more specific just the coding and game mechanics developer by next march, Right now I'm only focusing on developing for the Oculus Quest because that is the only VR headset I have. I'm not aiming to become an expert off the start just good enough to get into an entry-level position. I've been learning C# up to the advanced concepts like delegates, interfaces, etc. for Unity3D I'm getting the fundamentals of manipulating game objects, accessing components, and using the VR prefabs through scripts. I've realized recently that I don't have a well-defined plan, I understand that I need to learn C#, Unity3D and how to develop for VR but I don't know exactly how much is required to get an entry-level position.

 

Sure you can have something working within a year, if you put quite an effort into it and time.
Don't expect any kind of viable product, if is minimalist. You probably got less than part-time of available time, to dedicate into your project.

Other than learning, what else have you done, since last year, when you posted
Becoming a AR developer with no degree
toward learning AR / VR?
Did you build any kind of prototype, however simplistic is?

 

Since then I've made a small just to see how all the different parts work together, for example in a Udemy course I followed a tutorial of making an fps kind of game. Instead of using the fps controller prefab I used the Oculus VR prefab (I can't remember the exact name of it ) and practiced how the hand tracking models work versus the hands with the controllers in them prefab.

 

These courses are free during three months:

• https://learn.unity.com/tutorial/enabling-vr-1#
  
• https://learn.unity.com/project/vr-beginner-the-escape-room/?tab=overview

 

VR is actually surprisingly easy to build for. Download the SteamVR plugin and just have fun.

Any regular program for learning Unity will work for VR, the differences are fairly minor.

 

I think you just need to acquire a headset, and dive head first into studying unity hard way. Meaning start making a unity game and learn things as you go.

However, that's just my opinion.

I think that one of the biggest mistakes people make while trying to learn stuff is searching for the most optimal way to do it. Very frequently, there's no "the optimal way", and the time they spend end up wasted.

 

It is easy enough to develop for the Quest, but you will need to get permission from Oculus if you want to release your Quest game on their store. The store for the Quest is similar to the stores for consoles. The store owners want experienced developers to sell polished games. They don't really welcome indie developers completely. Just something to be aware of.

Another thing to consider with the Quest is using a USB3 data cable (not your stock charging cable) to connect the Quest and use it like a Rift. When you do that, you can build and run PC VR games using the Quest. It works really slick.

https://support.oculus.com/444256562873335/
https://www.oculus.com/quest/accessories/
https://www.oculus.com/blog/play-ri...ulus-link-available-now-in-beta/?locale=en_US

There are two reasons I mention using the Quest for PC VR dev. One is that it reduces the iteration time while you are developing your game. Building and running natively on the Quest is similar to the build chain for Android. Building for PC is much quicker. In fact, you can test PC VR using the Quest (over USB3) using the Play button in Unity without actually building the game each time.

The other reason is the fact that building for PC VR will get you a chance to get established. Oculus restricts the games that are allowed on the Quest store, but not on the Oculus PC VR store. And you can also release PC VR games on Steam.