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Changing jobs

julius_alamarvd
Honored Guest
Hi everyone ! 

Since I bought Oculus quest I was hooked and I have decided that I want to change my career and start working with it. But I was wondering, what kind of skills do I need ? how many companies are there out there and do they need more people ? I tried googling companies but I usually just get news articles or games. (or Im just bad at googling). I went to a seminar today about coding looks like fun. 

So what is my question. 
1. What do I need to learn in order to work with software development for VR
2. Are there any jobs available in 2 years?
3. Can I make a decent wage? 
4. I am currently working as a sales manager and I earn about 3000 USD a month before taxes. What should I expect wage wize? should I start getting used to earning less? 

I appreciate any feedback as this is for me atleast a huge leap to take now in the midpoint of my life. 

With Kind Regards
Julius
6 REPLIES 6

Richooal
Consultant
1. How to do software and programming and stuff.

2. It's possible that this new fangle I.T. thing could be still around in 2 years (best to back yourself with a real trade though, like plumbing)

3. It's rumoured that the likes of Bill Gates, John Carmack and Mark Zuckerberg have all earned more than $3000/month. (and I mean "each" not combined)

4. You'll earn less to start with but, after that, your effort and ability will determine your income.
i5 6600k - GTX1060 - 8GB RAM - Rift CV1 + 3 Sensors - 1 minor problem
Dear Oculus, If it ain't broke, don't fix it, please.

kojack
MVP
MVP
Grab Unity (personal edition is free) or Unreal (free). Both make VR development very easy. Well, very easy to put an environment in VR, harder to make cool stuff happen like physics interactions and stuff.
You should be able to find tutorials on the basic setup stuff.
My students go from "What is VR?" to releasing a project on 3 headsets (Go, Quest and Rift) in 4 weeks. Although they already have about 1.5 years of Unity game dev experience by that point.

No idea on jobs/money.
Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2

julius_alamarvd
Honored Guest

kojack said:

Grab Unity (personal edition is free) or Unreal (free). Both make VR development very easy. Well, very easy to put an environment in VR, harder to make cool stuff happen like physics interactions and stuff.
You should be able to find tutorials on the basic setup stuff.
My students go from "What is VR?" to releasing a project on 3 headsets (Go, Quest and Rift) in 4 weeks. Although they already have about 1.5 years of Unity game dev experience by that point.

No idea on jobs/money.


Thanks for the help, im gonna check those out, do you need to know c#, java and the traditional stuff like that? or is it completely different ? 

kojack
MVP
MVP
If you go with Unity, you need to understand C#. There's not much you can do without writing code. (You can make a simple VR scene, but anything like interaction or movement needs programming)

Unreal has two ways of working: Blueprint or C++. Blueprint is a visual graph based programming system that some people find much easier than writing code (not me though, I hate it). C++ in Unreal is much harder than C# in Unity.

I'd say Unity has better documentation and more help available, but it's been a while since I tried Unreal (last time I did the documentation was severely lacking).
Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2

austin50gerald
Honored Guest

You know, there are many different sources where you could find a job, but not everyone of them is trustworthy, so in this case I would like to emphasize the importance of using job agency like https://jobssite.ca/ where you will certainly have the opportunity to look for a job and choose the best one for yourself. After reading my post, it might help you the same time if you'll decide to verify this source.

The route from nothing to VR developer is not a quick one. You will definitely need coding skills but you should probably start with basic programming in a variant of C or a similar high-level langauge before looking at a game engine. Set yourself a project to make something simple and boring, and test the hell out of it to make it reliable. Without a strong grounding in reliable, efficient algorithmic programming, you're going to struggle to get a job anywhere.

 

If you do manage to land a job, don't expect to waltz in on good money. You'll probably have to start out in software testing and move into debugging other peoples code before you get to make your own. It's all about proving yourself. Anyone can make a simple demo in Unity but it's a much bigger ask to make something worthwhile.

 

One way to prove yourself is by developing independently. It's likely to be thankless and unpaid but if you manage to make something cool and get yourself noticed, the sky is the limit.