Devlog 4 — December 2020
The Headset Dance
Here’s something nobody warns you about when you start building a VR app: you spend an absurd amount of time putting on and taking off a headset. I’m not exaggerating. Every small code change means pulling the headset on, checking the result, pulling it off, adjusting, recompiling, and doing the whole routine again. Meanwhile the cables are getting twisted, the HMD has gone to sleep, SteamVR decided it doesn’t want to run today, and Unity has crashed for the third time this hour.
It’s a death-by-a-thousand-cuts kind of problem. Each cycle only takes a minute or two, but when you’re iterating dozens of times in a session, the friction adds up fast. It was genuinely slowing me down.
A Desktop Shortcut
I decided to try out the XR Interaction Rig from the Bearded Ninja Games VR framework. The idea is simple but powerful: it simulates the VR environment using mouse and keyboard input, so you can move around the scene and interact with objects without ever touching a headset. For quick checks — does this button work, is this element positioned right, does the audio route correctly — it’s more than enough.
The time savings were immediate. No more booting up the Vive, adjusting the straps, waiting for the base stations. I could just hit play in Unity and start clicking around the virtual studio like any other desktop application. For rapid iteration, it’s been a game changer.
An Accidental Feature
Here’s the thing I didn’t expect. Once the desktop simulation was running smoothly, I realised the studio could actually be operated — with some limitations — by someone who doesn’t own a VR headset at all. You lose the immersion and the spatial interaction, sure, but the core functionality is there. You can still load tracks, adjust levels, work the console.
That completely changes who this project could reach. Not everyone has a Vive or a Rift sitting around. If the studio works on a flatscreen too, even as a secondary mode, the potential audience expands significantly. What started as a developer shortcut might end up being an actual feature.