3D Printing For Gamers With Disabilities – Giving A Talk in VR

If you’ve been here for a while you’ve probably seen many of my posts over time where I’m designing and 3D printing stuff to help gamers who have disabilities. I do this as a side project called TheControllerProject, and it’s been growing like crazy. We’ve got over 100 volunteers in 19 countries now!

Recently, a group called Sunken Blimp contacted me and asked if I wanted to give a talk about the project on their virtual stage. Well, I also happen to be a virtual reality fan, as you may recall from my visit to Valve a few years ago. This concept is quite intriguing. Their stage is a virtual 3D set that you can explore via your browser, phone, or VR Headset. That’s super neat.

I’ll be giving my talk on Friday (tomorrow) July 8th, 12pm EST. It’s totally free, but there are only 50 seats available, so join here!

Now let’s geek out a little and I’ll tell you my thoughts going into this.

I’ve been struggling for the past few years to find zoom calls to be enticing at all. I’m sure a lot of you are this way. I truly miss in-person interactions where I can feel the energy of the room. Where I can look around at my peers or wander off in a corner and argue about the finer points of some niche nonsense with a stranger.

I think this platform is an interesting take on a new approach. Sure, new is a little bit of a stretch here, we’ve seen talks and even full concerts happen in MMO’s all the time. Like U2 performing in 2nd life over a decade ago

This seems to be a streamlining of that concept, removing the rest of the game and optimizing for presentation. To be fully honest with myself, I don’t think I understand their business model, but I think VR is neat and I love to talk about myself, so I’ll do it. I think it’ll be fun to try out.

In this case, there are some cool aspects. You can walk around and look at the 3d models while I drone on in the background! That’s friggin’ cool. To be perfectly blunt, I think this could fall in the “neat but not great” category pretty easily, but it could also end up being great! The only way to find out is to try.