While working at TMU’s (Toronto Metropolitan University) I mainly focused on data analytics research. My career as a technical designer continued to grow in design and prototyping meetings, conducting user studies, and generally affiliating myself XR applications of data analysis. However, I needed to focus on making software where I could explore more creative mechanics and practice my design intuitions.

I was able to develop in the lab using lab hardware such as an HTC Vive. I chose Unreal over Unity because I find the data structures more intuitive, and I was excited to try UE 5. I had been developing for UE4 for the past year and was excited to experience the big change. In my opinion the changes to hot reload and streamlining/reconfiguring of UE5’s UI should be put ahead of unity for newcomers to videogame development.

With an emphasise on building classes to simulate vehicle physics I was able to use positional displacement of the controls to drive direction and magnitude of the engine thrust and apply torque to frame.

When I started to look for my first job and establish my legitimacy as a programmer I got my break with D&D skunkworks who were building a VR police training traffic simulation. I had this project in my back pocket and rebuilt it in Unity to show my proficiency. I ran into an issue with controller lag when the parent object of the VR component was being translated. To work quickly I rebuilt the system to apply reverse kinematic forces to the environment based on thrust and collision.