Make: Volume 52

controlled car, or make them into a zombie

as Yates puts it. Luckily, the zombie machine

didn’t make it into the final product.

The magic formula to stop nausea

ended up being a mixture of several things

all working fluidly together. The physical

display needed to be able to update at

incredible speeds to keep your eyes from

noticing any delay, and the tracking of

your movements needed to be extremely

accurate. Any little movement had to be

translated through the system and to your

eyes before you could perceive a change.

“Finally ... the conversation could move

on from motion sickness,” says Yates’

teammate Christen Coomer.

FABRICATING PROTOTYPES

Once Valve settled on a tracking technology

and a display system, things began to go

incredibly fast. Modern desktop fabrication

tools allowed the team to try new ideas very

quickly. Many of the early prototypes looked

like things that someone could make at

home, and Yates agreed, this tech isn’t out

of the reach of an enthusiast.

“3D printing is core to our ability to do

this,” says Yates. “I don’t know how we could

have done all of this without it. We have

3D printers, laser cutters, and a PCB mill.

Those are really the three fundamental tools

you’d find in a makerspace and that’s really

all you would need to do most of this.”

Valve’s background was in software,

where you can make an update or “patch”

and distribute it within hours. Rapid

prototyping allowed them to carry this

methodology over into hardware. The

engineers could create a prototype and get

feedback from their peers in the morning,

and have a revised physical item fresh out of

the 3D printer in the afternoon. Previously,

something like this would involve weeks of

waiting while a prototype was constructed

elsewhere, then delivered.

During this type of process, there are

happy accidents that take on a life of their

own. You can be developing one experience

and every tester steps inside and does the

same unplanned action, but they all love

it. That unplanned feedback ends up being

the direction you should go. This is true in

both hardware and software experiences.

If everyone picks up a controller the same

“wrong” way, it is your design that is wrong

and should be adjusted.

Sharing is integral, Coomer explains. “If

you’re doing something privately, you’re

not learning,” he says. And what the team

learned is that in virtual reality there were

no hard rules. “Everything we thought we

knew was out the window.”

Valve continued refining the design

drastically even a few weeks before the

commercial release of the VR headset.

The team didn’t have an established road

map, so trying new ideas was their primary

method of determining what worked and

what didn’t. They’d push out prototypes

to coworkers to get feedback as early and

often as possible, and cancel those that

didn’t pan out — they realized there was no

point refining and polishing a prototype that

they were not going to pursue.

Since Valve was built on the makers who

modded games, the team is eager to see

how people mod the HTC Vive hardware.

The device had only been out on the market

for a few weeks and yet people were

already customizing and altering them.

One person replaced the elastic straps with

the head harness from a welding mask,

allowing for easier transition from wearing

to not wearing the goggles. One team

of developers used a tracked controller

mounted to a camera to overlay the game

environment onto footage of a person

playing it, allowing someone to watch a

video and see the player immersed into

the game world. These were unexpected

modifications, and welcomed completely by

the company.

RECRUITING AT MAKER FAIRE

How does a person end up as a virtual

reality engineer at Valve? The short answer

is to get out there and make stuff. Valve has

been very open with their hiring practices.

Their employee handbook, riddled with

humor and great illustrations, is open to

the public. The most striking illustration

in that handbook is the description of the

ideal employee. They call it the “T-shaped”

employee — someone who has a single

area of specialty, but a very broad range of

general knowledge. This is necessary, as

you really need to be flexible and able to

react to feedback, constantly pivoting toward

a better product.

Maker Faire, as it turns out, is a perfect

place to find these people. Of the handful of

virtual reality engineers I spoke with during

makershed.com28

Special Section

VR/AR | HTC Vive Prototypes

1. Vive prototypes, from oldest to newest.

2. The “zombie machine,” a galvanic

vestibular stimulation prototype.

3. Evolution of the laser detecting

sensors that allow the Vive tracking

system (called Lighthouse) to work.

4. Lighthouse base station evolution.

Note the early prototype that used two

hard drives hacked in half.

5. Designing various geometries to find

the best results in tracking controllers.

6. Alan Yates models an early unit

featuring a hacked LCD monitor moved

by gripping a handle with your teeth.

7. The robotic arm used for testing

accuracy of positional tracking.

1

3 4

PHOTOS

2

M52_026-9_SSvive_F2.indd 28 6/15/16 9:32 AM