I'm interested in learning what went into the Tuscany demo. I have questions like: + How many people worked on it? + How much time went into it? + Are the textures photographs or digital paintings? + How much code (outside of the actual Rift SDK) was written in C# or JS in Unity? + How much of what went into it are purchased resources (IE stock photography, models, textures..etc) versus original?
The general thrust of my interest is that I want to know how realistic it is for a single artist/developer to aspire to make experiences like that? Obviously it represents a high degree of mastery of whatever skills went into making it, but if it also represents the work of 20 people over 6 months, then...?
This demo was saddled by Brian McRae and developed with the help of other employees at his indie game company, Fenix Fire. They have a short description of the development process on their blog. If you e-mail them, they might offer more information.
I don't think that demo would take very long to make once you understood the tools. I'm guessing I could reproduce it using blender & UDK in a couple of dedicated weeks (80 hours or so). I've only been doing blender/UDK on weekends/late-nights for 9 months. Maybe I'll try that once I finish my current Ready Player One project.
With the proper talent, I think one person could make something comparable to Tuscany. How long that would take, I don't know. But it's certainly possible.
From a modelling point of view it would probably take me a couple of days using some stuff from my repository, textures etc. Putting it together in Unity perhaps another day or so, because it is only a small patch.