Presenting: VRimba, a playable virtual-reality marimba

I hinted at this during an earlier post, but 2021 has seen me dipping my toes into the waters of a couple non- music-related things, and one of them has reached a milestone; being able to show something off and officially add it to my design portfolio.

I present to you VRimba, a fully-playable 5-octave virtual-reality marimba.

How did VRimba come to be?

This past spring, with my industry still shut down and me feeling the need to keep my brain engaged and challenged, I knew I wanted to find some new things to learn and explore some relatively new areas of interest. Having just acquired a very entertaining and all-around-awesome Oculus Quest, and knowing that VR and AR (collectively known as XR) are on a path to intersect our lives more and more as personal technology continues its march forward, I stumbled across an online learning platform called CircuitStream. CS is a leader in providing online training in XR for designers and developers of any skill level, with a fantastic team of instructors and expanding array of courses.

I decided to enroll in a one-month introductory course where we explored the basics of game development on a 2D/3D game engine platform called Unity. Not only did we learn the basics of getting around Unity, we also learned the fundamentals of the scripting language C#, which is basically how you get your Unity game objects and graphical elements to come alive with behaviors and logic.

Let's just say that my coding experience took about a 35-year break in between writing Commodore 64 and Apple IIe programs in BASIC as an early-80s kid and jumping into object-oriented programming in C# in 2021. There are, and continue to be, cobwebs in my brain that have basically fossilized during the intervening decades. Re-learning computer science after such a long break is not as easy as I'd assumed it would be.

That said, I enjoyed the intro course, and it made me hungry for more. CircuitStream is full of an energized, friendly, and fun community of educators and learners, and I felt so welcomed and encouraged that when a new 10-week course in XR Design and Prototyping was announced, I jumped onboard. This was my chance to see if I could actually develop an idea in my mind into something concrete that could be experienced by others, through the medium of virtual reality.

The YouTube video I linked above explains the basics, where the project is now, and what I've got planned for it in the future.

I have to mention two important things. The first is that the concert hall and marimba 3D models are not my own, but assets that I found online for free or purchase. (3D-modeling a marimba from scratch would have taken me months, likely years.) The creators of those assets are credited in the video.

The second is that I couldn't have done any of this without the great folks at CircuitStream, especially my 1-on-1 instructor, Indika Wijesooriya. Even though I've completed two courses at CS, all the alums and instructors are still active daily on Slack and in weekly VR meetups--some of us are even planning to meet up next week in actual reality! I count the CircuitStream community as a new circle of real-life friends.

Is VRimba for sale?

No.

Is it available for download?

Not really (although if you own a Quest, I could side-load it for you).

Is it finished?

Absolutely not. I have all sorts of things to add and fix: velocity, UI, haptic feedback-- the list is long, and just like any software, it will never be "done",

Then what's the point?

My adventures in XR have started with a curiosity and a desire to learn about something that I find interesting and compelling. Will it lead to anything? A career change? A music-focused VR startup? A side hustle as an Oculus developer? I can't answer any of these right now. I just know I made something that I'm proud of, I'm going to keep working on it, and I'm open to wherever it might lead me.

I can't wait to hang out with you with my headset in tow, and maybe persuade you to strap it on and give it a try.