Kolja

  • Pocket Observatory for Google Cardboard

    Just finished and submitted the iPhone / Google Cardboard version of Pocket Observatory! It really paid off to use Unity – porting from Android with the Oculus SDK to iPhone with GoogleVR turned out to be really easy. Here are the quirks I encountered, might be useful to know if you’re embarking on a similar project: In Gear VR, system messages (e.g., asking for permissions) are displayed properly and can…

  • Pocket Observatory: wrapping up

    Haven’t posted as many updates here as planned, because I was terribly busy finishing implementation. But I have started an Instagram channel (@pocketobservatory)and a Tumblr blog, just to share the IG posts to the web: pocketobservatory.tumblr.com Now it’s all about finishing materials for submission to the Oculus store, and setting up a landing page, etc. Coming soon!

  • Pocket Observatory: Finalizing!

    Yes, I have decided on a name for my upcoming Gear VR astronomy app: Tadaa – Pocket Observatory! Seems it is getting to a decent stage… it’s hard to stop adding features when new ideas pop up every five minutes, but this all has to wait for future releases. Now, it’s all about polishing and optimizing! I found a really, really helpful guide to optimizing Gear VR apps on the…

  • The sun, the stars, the sky

    Slowly, but steadily, it’s coming together. Since my upcoming stargazing app is also featuring a nice landscape and daylight, I am currently spending quite some time adjusting lighting and the complexity of the scene. After all, this has to run with a steady 60 fps on the Galaxy S6 with the Gear VR headset. Mind you, the scene is not complex by today’s standards, but hey, this is still a…

  • ‘Simple’ property animation in Unity

    Recently, I’ve spent a few hours with Unity’s new animation system, Mecanim. I wasn’t working on any complex animations, but only wanted to implement fading of a few elements in my scene. This turned out to be a real desaster. Why? For simply fading a property in an out, I needed two animation clips and four states, with pretty sensitive transition setup (I wanted the fading to be interruptible, etc.)The…

  • 3D Text with depth test in Unity

    The 3D Text asset built into Unity renders always on top, regardless of z depth. This helps to avoid z-fighting issues, if your text is coplanar to other geometry in the scene, but often not what you want. I have labels in my scene which I DO want to be hidden by geometry in front. Unfortunately, there is no simple switch to turn on depth testing – even though users…

  • Custom assets with Unity

    Today I’ve taken the time to clean up the architecture of my VR stars Unity app (I really have to find a name for this project!). One really cool Unity feature is the ability to create custom assets by scripts run in the editor, so you don’t have to build complex structures at runtime. Why is this so fantastic? Well, usually I would read star positions, constellation data, etc. from…

  • To the stars with Gear VR!

    Getting more serious about VR… the HTC Vive is extremely cool, but quite some investment for starters. Decided to get myself a decent Android phone and a Gear VR, and started porting my astronomy app Cor Leonis to Unity. Good progress so far! Stars, planets, moon, and sun are all in, reading device location and compass is a breeze in Unity, so I can already have a view of the…

  • Lightbox Trace 2.0 with In-App feature

    I recently published version 2.0 of my iPad App Lightbox Trace, introducing a filter panel as an optional In-App feature. This really comes in handy, when your sketches don’t have enough contrast or you want to desaturate a colored image before tracing. Check it out! Unfortunately, I ran into a problem with enabling the In-App purchase, so it just didn’t work for about a week. If you tried and got…

  • VR User interface experiments

    I’m currently experimenting with the UI for my upcoming Gear VR star gazing application. Virtual reality user interfaces are really interesting, since they have to work so differently from a standard 2D UI. One possible realization is to have interactive elements as actual 3D objects in the scene. This can be fun! For my app, I am thinking about putting a “time machine” into the scene, which will allow you…