The Bumpy Road Travelled
As this has been a self-funded passion project so far, it’s been on the backburner every now and then. 8 years are gone in a flash. Progress was fun, slow, too often frustrating but still steady as she goes, as I don’t like quitting.
2016
I always wanted to be an audio engineer but never became one. But I had just watched the Sound City documentary and the story of the Focusrite consoles on YouTube, and it hit me. I should try and build a studio console in VR as I can’t afford one in real life. In just a day I made a proof of concept in VR where you could control 8 tracks on a simple audio mixer. I was hooked and gone were the evenings.
2017
Every bit of spare time I had I modeled stuff, threw it in Unity and see if it sticks. I wrote code, watched millions of hours of YouTube, did research. I ended up modelling a Neve VR console just from images and repair manuals I could find online. When the console was finally built (after learning Blender 3D) I made it work in a VR app in Unity. Yay!
I tried to simulate as much of the knobs, faders and buttons like the real thing, so it took a while. I’ve never seen an actual Neve like that, but I got to know your own multitracks and change some basic stuff like pan, mute, solo and EQ. Posted some early stuff on YouTube — “Smells Like Testing the Studio” mixing a Nirvana song — got some traction, got a warning from YouTube, but timing was not right for a release, money was tight and I had other stuff going on.
2018
Feeling nostalgic I added more stuff to the control room — lights, outboard, everything. And I built a working multitrack tape machine based upon a classic Studer. I made it so I could load either complete reels of existing songs (Queen, Marvin Gaye etc.) or I could load separate files from disk, channel by channel, up to 24 tracks. Also had to fully redo all the VR stuff because newer and better came around the corner.
2019
Reworked a lot of stuff on the console and added compression, filters, aux sends on each channel — just because every button in sight should function like it should to make it feel real. Added equipment and functions like reverb, delay, flashing lights. On the scribble strips with color you can write track info on each channel, which makes it at least 2x as cool as before.
2020
Changed to another VR framework again, because of new hardware. Added support for other headsets like Oculus and stuff while still working on my ancient Vive. Did some more cooler VU meters on the multitrack and outboard and made everything just look better. Still no cinema vibes — boom, why not add video to the studio.
2021
As an experiment I made the acoustic guitar, the piano and the drums playable in VR — this is fun and promising. Added a 2-track recorder to the studio, because if I can’t mix my song to a 2-track, what’s the point. Also did a massive amount of optimization to get everything running smoothly on my lower spec system. Ready Player Me provided my looks in the studio, so I developed a selfie VR cam and tried V-tubing for two vids. Don’t have the time, but awesome feature to have in the studio.
2022
The master section was finally doing more stuff than just look pretty. 35% of buttons work. I added the possibility to route and do subgrouping on the channels for the nerds like me that love to do parallel compression on a drum bus. Expanded the studio with some rooms and an office and of course a plant. Lift it up and read the label please. Optimizations and improvements to studio graphics, operation and sound quality slowly building towards a possible release on Steam or something.
2023
These months I got so fed up with all the stuff at Unity, it gave negative vibes, so I quit development in Unity completely. Done — 8 years of dev experience down the drain? I jumped ship to see how the other gaming engine was living. I was not disappointed.
I started off from scratch and made an SSL 9K series console in Blender like the one from Dre, then brought it into Unreal and started messing with XR. It took a while, but nearing Christmas, I was sure I was never to return to Unity — this is better.
2024
Unreal is not easy to learn and the curve is steep, but the curve goes up really quick. When it clicks, it clicks really well. I’m still learning every day but I got more stuff done in the last 5 months in Unreal than I did in 7 years prior in Unity. And although I did it a lot faster, it looks amazing and runs at least 10 times better than anything before. Maybe it’s Unreal or maybe I’m just quicker, sleeker and better the 2nd time around — who knows.
2025
This year I got the audio inner workings working well within Unreal. Also the studio is starting to look a lot like a real studio. Got most of my VR setup as I wanted and expanded a lot of the studio design with an asset pack that is very inspiring. Although the existing console and multitrack were not nearly near the quality as mine, the rest is quite good. Even outboard is sometimes usable, which will save a lot of modeling work.
Loading audio files, mixing, playback with reverb and effect sends — all is working. On to 2026!