Cyrus Maden journal

About

Hi everyone! I'm Cyrus. I'm new to VR, although I did try a HoloLens once.

I'm an applied math concentrator interested in urban planning/smart cities. VR fits right into this, so I'm excited to learn more its applications in the public sector, use in education, and role in scientific research. Also, I love to write and have a background in technical writing. 

I have experience with Wikimedia (chat me up @soyrice on my Wikipedia talk page), markup languages (Markdown, reStructuredText), API doc generators (Sphinx, Doxygen, MkDocs), software testing and evaluation, and some programming for web apps (Python, JavaScript, HTML/CSS).

Activity Log

• 1/28, 2-4pm, downloaded and installed Blender on a Windows 10 partition. Struggled through the Blender Basics tutorial with my mousepad only.

• 1/29, 7-10pm, inspired by Zootopia, I downloaded a CityEngine free trial and explored the UI. I read about CityEngine vs Blender for urban planning and learned about ArcGIS 360 VR, an app that immerses you in your CityEngine mockups.

• 1/31, 3-5pm, read more about the current and predicted applications of VR tools in urban planning. Continued to explore CityEngine and tried to compare Blender Basics tutorial to CityEngine. (Am I able to walk through the same basic steps and create the same basic scenes?) I noticed that, while most of the fundamental skills are the same, there's a disconnect between general and niche (or industry-specific) products. It got me thinking that it might be difficult to evaluate both types of software with the same tutorials/scorecard. The TODO for 2/1 mentions evaluating software at various levels, which could also include evaluating software for various goals if the intent of the software is unique or specific to a particular industry.

• 1/31, 7-8pm, checked out some three.js projects. This one was my favorite, and I couldn't stop riding this roller coaster built on WebVR.

• 2/2, 4-5pm, added About section in journal with more info about my skills/interests 

• 2/5, 6-9pm, researched a lot about the HTC Vive. Finally got an understanding of how it works and what VR experiences you can have with it.

• 2/10, 1-5pm, researched Oculus Rift. Same as above. I finally understand the hype around these things!

• 2/12, 6-10pm, updated journal with progress report spreadsheet ("What Have I Been Working On?") and planned deliverables ("What's On My Plate?")

• 2/14, 7-10pm, continue to research hardware compatibility. (What are the broad trends in hardware computability relevant to our software review? What is the best way to fit these findings into the taxonomy of software types?)

• 2/19, 1-5pm, drew up a flowchart showing how you get your VR product from a modeling software to a real-time engine to an HMD.

• 2/24, 12-6pm, researched all of the computer specifications that each real-time engine needs to bring an a VR experience into an HMD.

• 2/25, 12-3pm, looked up/watched YouTube tutorials on writing VR interactions in Unreal, Unity, Cryengine, Lumberyard, VTK, and WorldViz (Vizible)

• 2/28, 9-10, changed the flowchart to a matrix, decided to organize compatibility restrictions (certain phones, operating system restrictions) into 3 groups, trimmed the matrix to the 5 real-time engines currently in the wiki and the top 6 HMDs

• 3/4, 12-5pm, filled out the matrix/spreadsheet

• 3/5, 5-9pm, researched who is using the available hardware and if there's a relationship between software used by organizations and their ability to purchase hardware, updated journal

• Week of 3/12, 8 hrs, started (research and outline) hardware summary for Samsung Gear VR, building off of Kevin's hardware summaries

• Week of 3/19, 5 hrs, started (research and outline) hardware summary for Sony Playstation VR, building off of Kevin's hardware summaries

• Week of 3/26, 12 hrs, researched software/HMD compatibility re: A-Frame/WebVR, updated matrix with info, started reviewing wiki to help organize content

• Week of 4/2, 9 hrs, reviewed info on hardware emulators listed in manuscript and complete any background reading to summarize the process of hardware emulation

• Week of 4/9, 6 hrs, researched Xcode/CocoaPods and MinVR for HMD matrix

• Week of 4/16, 9 hrs, integrated research on hardware emulators into manuscript and started to integrate research on Xcode/CocoaPods, MinVR, and A-Frame

• 4/18, 8-11pm, finished integrating research on Xcode/CocoaPods, MinVR, and A-Frame into HMD matrix

• 4/23 10-11pm, started writing editorial comments in manuscript for organization

• 4/24, 6-8am, finished writing editorial comments

• 4/28, 1-4pm, reviewed existing pages under "VR Visualization Software" and researched ways/best practices to organize the wiki

• 4/29, 11-6pm, continued to fill in hardware matrix and added info from pages under "VR Modeling Software"

• 5/2, 9-11am, researched differences between new and classic Google Sites re: anchor pages and tables of contents

• 5/6, 2-6pm, reviewed "VR Development Software" pages for any updates/missing info that could be added to hardware matrix, updated journal 

• 5/7, 7-10am, put final touches on hardware matrix, put together slides for final presentation

• 5/8, 6-8pm, experimented with ways to improve the hardware matrix, based on feedback from presentation; ended up changing the text colors to match the cell colors to try to improve readability

• 5/10, 8-11pm, reorganized journal page and wrote final report

• 5/11, 10-2pm, did another pass of #todo comments, read all the pages and commented reminders/recommendations on integrating them into the table of contents, updated journal