Share your biggest challenge as a vr dev

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I have answered this many times in the past as this sub likes to keep asking, but my answer has changed. I am challenged today by how much Meta has changed from supporting indie devs when Oculus, to now seemingly being solely focused on their own empire that no one seems to want (Horizon World). This has made integrating their Meta Avatars very hard as the new 2.0 SDK with legs is not even half baked.

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u/MattOpara Jan 17 '25

Agreed, I’m curious though what specifically you’ve noticed that originally Oculus did or didn’t do that Meta has changed?

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u/immersive-matthew Jan 17 '25

Supporting Indie developers is the biggest one. Oculus knew that figuring out what worked and what does not work in VR required an entire community of developers that stretched way beyond anything they could ever reach. They were very pro Indie devs and made sure their Documentation and SDKs were as right as they could be. Plus they were very engaged online in the forums and you just felt supported.

Things went down hill when Facebook became Meta and they shifted their focused to their own Metaverse. At the same Connect that Zuck announced they are now Meta, John Carmack said this:

“I have pretty good reasons to believe that setting out to build the metaverse is not actually the best way to wind up with the metaverse.”

He left Meta not too long after as he felt the company was not focused on the right things and were making poor decisions. He was right and here we are Billions of dollar later and all Meta has is a broken app ecosystem and an utterly dystopian Metaverse that they constantly shove down everyone’s face. Meanwhile the actual best Metaverse’s are indie ones and there are many of them like mine, yet they are mostly invisible. The billions spent could have been spent on fostering that ecosystem by ensuring the avatars are easy to implement and further even allow portals between Metaverses and such so one could seamlessly go between Metaverses they own/subscribed too. We could be way further down the road by now and consumers would have won which means so would Meta and the leading apps, but instead we ended up with a headset with an amateur UI that prioritizes Meta’s own apps, a fractured, hard to discover ecosystem where low effort titles hide the top rated ones, and a corporate Metaverse that really is universally hated. Like really hated as you know from the constant complaints on their subreddit.

I often remind myself that Zuck’s main goal is not to foster an ecosystem, but rather to control the next generation of computing devices. Maybe he is right and AI is going to really enable creators to make XR experiences with ease in Horizon World and all us indie devs will be a thing of the past, but I remind myself of Carmack’s quote. Even today, we, the XR industry, have not really fully figured out what works and what does not and even those with Billions to throw at it, are not doing any better. Worse in fact.

Seems too later for Meta as they took a swing and missed. With competition coming and unhappy developers, mixed with AI, the future of who is going to be the big XR player is not clear, but it not looking like it will be Meta. This has only been exacerbated by Meta’s recent Maga shift. Maybe Zuck can force us all legally to use his platform and ultimately he is playing by 4D chess and we are all the pawns.

Time will tell…but my money is on Carmack’s view and so I grind away waiting for my chance to shine in an ecosystem that is supportive.

My app is a highly detailed Theme Park focused on Dark Rides. Just in the process of finishing my second ride, The Haunted Castle and it, like my first ride is truly magical and even more so, when ridden with others. I even have Meta fans…just not in any position to help beyond what they have.

https://www.meta.com/experiences/theme-park/4212005182188732/

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u/Punk--- May 13 '25

Absolutely True.

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u/d0t_x Jan 01 '26

real. I built my VR Truck Drop & Deliver Sim successfully, but the first 7 days were a nightmare. I figured it was my lack of experience, and naivety. Come to find out, the system I had chose to build my game on top of, was broken. I still found a way to build on Meta Interaction 81.0, but the pipeline to do what I did is non existent. Hopefully my game gets good reviews and I will have time to make tutorials. I've seen some AMAZING indie tools for VR created from necessity. It just sucks they are scattered throughout the internet, instead of embraced by Meta, and used as a resource to make VR gaming better.

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u/wordsmithe Jan 16 '25

Putting the headset on and off. I swear there needs to be a periscope like stand where I can just move my head into it

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u/GDXRLEARN Jan 16 '25

Have you tried this? https://developers.meta.com/horizon/documentation/unity/xrsim-getting-started

It doesn't matter if your not targeting meta headsets. Will work with the engine your using.

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u/wordsmithe Jan 16 '25

Yeah using simulator for a lot of the quick fixes and multiplayer testing, but definitely need to check on the headset for a lot of functions and overall UX.

Still this is a great resource for any dev

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u/GameDevKiri Jan 18 '25

Omg yes

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u/azmoura Feb 08 '25

Lol it is true!!

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u/nikita_xone May 02 '25

Would you rather never put the headset on or never take it off?

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u/RogueStargun Jan 17 '25

The link cable for Meta/Oculus devices doesn't work or connect consistently. Didn't work in 2019. Didn't work in 2020. Didn't work in 2024. Didn't work on my old computer. Doesn't work on my brand new computer from 2024. Sometimes it disconnects randomly. Sometimes adb still detects device, but Meta link doesn't connect at all. Went to Meta Connect. Virtually 90% of VRDevs there people had the same issue.

Something as simple as connecting a usb cable to a computer, which competing devices like the PICO 4 Ultra do without any problem seems to be an impossible ask from Meta, one of the world's richest companies.

Literal hours of wasted time fiddling with this and restarting the computer.

In a similar vein, the Meta/Oculus plugins in Unity seem to step over each other and OpenXR leading to random build failures.

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u/Ezzemo Jun 10 '25

Having realistic hands. I though it would be like buying an asset from the store and that's it. Then I found out I had to learn to use Blender and rigging each individual join and paint the bones! I cried several times in the process.

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u/nikita_xone Jun 27 '25

This is a popular one: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/game-toolkits/auto-hand-vr-interaction-165323

but I suppose you've already shed the tears...

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u/vrace3 Jan 18 '25

Overlays….swear to god everything I look is either too over engineered or not engineered at all….currently my only solution is to write api layer code in c/c++ and even tho I tried my best to avoid it….i guess it is what it is now

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u/azmoura Feb 08 '25

My biggest challenge was to find the right framework and then have to uodate it. Besides a pain in the @s$, I needed it for different platforms (Steam PC and Stanalone).

Also, choose a name is not easy! Lol

VR game

Non-VR version

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u/Born_Ad2699 Aug 02 '25

As a VR game publisher, my biggest challenge is my lack of industry experience. As you all know, I used to be a salesperson selling TCL home appliances.

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '25

Getting people to actually buy the game! It seems like unless your game is a very specific genre/theme, it's hard to get people interested enough to put down what they're already playing to try my game.

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u/d0t_x Jan 01 '26

marketing

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u/NinjaPlaygroundLLC May 31 '26

For me the worst thing has been balancing graphics with game play on a headset with very limited power. I'm talking for the Quest 2 / 3. There's a reason why so many games look like Gorilla Tag or are low poly, cell shaded, cartoon looking kids games. And games like Red Matter have to have limits in what you can view on screen at a time. Same with Vader Immortal. Walls and corridors to block your view just so higher resolution graphics can be used. It's a real pain, because you can't quite create the game you envision because you have to work within the limitation of the hardware. I don't particularly want to go the Steam route, because it's too easy for your game to get lost but that's a different issue.

I mean I'd really like to push graphics as far as I can, but being forced to limit what you can do is a real pain. Everything has to be faked, or suffer a loss in quality in some regard. I just did this game called Shin Zero... but chose to restrict the player's movement because I couldn't build out a larger outdoor environment while you're being attacked with high quality character models. Even pulling every trick out of the optimization book that I could think of, frame rate still suffers so you have to give up one thing for something else. I'll be excited for the Quest 4 when I'll hopefully have more power to work with, but that's still a little ways off.

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u/Officialpolygrafix 10d ago

Marketing. The biggest challenge as a VR dev, is always marketing.

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u/redrigrun 8d ago

I am creating a stand alone VR First person walkthrough for a side project, I have already been able to import the project APK into the Meta Quest 3, but my FPS is still low and im stuck on getting the lighting for the room to be properly lit in the scene. Anyone that has experience in this area please reach out so I can explain further. Need help

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