VR

I have many things to say about VR. Some good and some bad. VR ties very heavily into my coming out, but that is a seperate conversation. I also met my partner of around 3 years.

The short is I just wanted to listen to some music. And honestly I didn't expect much else. What happened was a very strange series of events which would end up shifting my life.

The technical conversations

For the first time in my life I had the opportunity to actually sit down and discuss engineering concepts on open source software or design questions well and truly beyond anything my peers were dealing with. I was intrigured...I would spent hours sketching out designs for projects I had no intention of building just because it was fun intellectual exercise.

I learned that maybe just maybe I had been selling myself very short on some things in my life...what was stopping me from pushing insanely new engineering concepts to the world? Why was I limiting myself in technologies to things I felt would make me money...why not try insane things that might not be worth anything, but might be fun.

Discussing physics with one person, AI with another, distributed systems with yet another...learning and sharing industry knowledge...over years.

See I had wondered into an invite only group for STEM professionals who people thought were worth discussing engineering topics with (effectively a quick vet of what's your background...are you in this space...what have you built). Several of us after joining this group would learn enough to progress in our careers and even enter the tech space. It was fun...it was wild...I saw someone implement a RISC-V CPU on a graphical shader...a graphical shader...my mind was blown.

Years later I would be invited to the workplaces of a few of these people who I had grown to call friends. I remember having sushi one night and we just talked about the insane things we were doing. I've seen hardware prototypes in person...learned why certain things were built the way they were. Even learned about compilers.

The people

I would end up meeting friends who I have seen in person today in multiple cities, several of whom I have the address of and an open invitiation to say hi when I travel. I had a lovely day once in a gaming cafe in Seattle playing a board game...I celebrated New Years with people I had originally met online. I know at a developer conference I can ping them and say hey...you going to be here? I got to Defcon and several will be there. I reviewed resumes of friends and even been refered by them.

You could see their body language with each tracked joint and limb...it is wild and truly insane.

In spite of the fact my digital handle was intended to be seperate...in reality it is a paper thin boundry to those I trust.

I met my partner Vee in a random chat one night...a small conversation that turned into multiple conversations. Within a month...maybe month and half she was on a plane to see me. After a year she was helping me move to California. We are basically one of the stories of We Met in Virtual Reality.

The technology

I've enjoyed the evolution of technology from the Gear VR, to the HTC Vive, to the Valve Index, and even the Bigscreen Beyond (a very niche headset custom made to it's user...known for being insanely lightweight). It's been cool to see the creativity of people writing code for their avatars and worlds...I have seen beautiful animations that can fill an entire room.

I've seen entire games implemented that rival that of full companies.

Worlds that are handsculpted over 100+ hours by artists just to show their dreams in reality.

Have seen and dabbled with kernel patches for Linux to get hardware working. Am friends with several people who maintain custom forks of Wine\Proton to make things work.

At one point even seriously considered working at VRChat. I don't so much anymore as I am nowhere near as active, but I did once.

My own avatar is even a nontrvial amount of engineering...plugins and modifications to match how I like to be seen in that world.

The less fun part

VR is often used as a means to cope and because it is inexpensive it one that a lot of people with deep issues in their lives use. It's also highly transient with people coming in during a strange part of their life and leaving back into the real world a different person. Many of the people I used to hang out with in the technology side of things are either inactive or way less active today.

And honestly...that's completely ok.

Back to Reality

I have a bit over 2000 hours logged in VRChat over the span of about 4-5 years. I log in once a week...maybe every 2 weeks today. I've largely moved to keeping in touch with friends through other means or just meeting in person. Or sometimes playing a game.

I've taken the skills learned...and yeah...my life is truly better.

It's a wild story to be sure...but at least it's a fun one.