AMA #7: Sophia Baldonado, Software Engineer at Pluto VR

Livio

And we’re starting!

@sophia please post a short summary of yourself and your work

sophia

Hello 👋 I’m Sophia, I am a software engineer at a small startup called Pluto over in Ballard. I’ve been there for over a year and a half and have grown to love VR :] I’ve also been working on indie games for fun for the past few years mainly as an artist, animator, or project manager

basically film, artist person turned programmer 😃

Livio

Liam couldn’t be online at this hour but he wanted to ask: “Have you attempted any kind of custom locomotion / movement features? If not, which method do you think shows the most promise?”

Jeanenne Campbell

Hey Sophia! 😃 what made you turn to Programming? Was it simply a choice or was it primarily for work?

sophia

Hi Jeanenne, through game dev I’ve worked really closely with programmers and always loved the design discussion with them, but it was sort of frustrating not to be able to implement things. I started with web design and ended up really enjoying the more technical aspects so I think it was a good fit

I think I’m more drawn to industries where there is an overlap of tech and art, though

Ian P

Do you just do programming at Pluto, or do you also do art/animation and managing

sophia

Pluto is a bit strange in that we don’t technically have roles or managers, but because we’re so small I do get to do a broader range of things than I might do somewhere else. I consider my main workload to be engineering tasks and then I do other things I’m interested in, sometimes related to UX or shared management

Today for instance, I spent a couple hours working on our internship onboarding and structure — not at all specific to an engineering role haha

Most days I’m coding, and don’t normally do any art

Livio

oh interesting. Reminds me of valve, but it makes sense since it’s a startup

sophia

Yeah it has some similarity to Valve’s structure for sure

Being small has its advantages 😃

Ian P

Is it difficult to manage your projects outside of your main work? And do you think you have more time or freedom to work on other things working at a smaller studio rather than a large one?

Livio

Are you still working on Quadra at all?

sophia

It can be difficult to manage my side projects at times. I’ve found it nearly impossible to be really working on more than one extra thing at a time (whether a game or an art project or other) while also working full time. I am lucky that I get to work on them for fun, though so for me I’m happy if I’ve spent 5 or more hours a week on a project.

I can’t really speak to the small vs large company comparison, but regardless of size the company culture really determines if there is a good work life balance

Livio, Quadra is coming soon 😃 we’ve wrapped up nearly everything and posted the store page

Livio

How much were you interested in VR before working at Pluto?

sophia

I don’t want to forget the question from earlier regarding locomotion. I have made a few VR games/experiences and honestly only 2 had locomotion that wasn’t just literally walking around with your real feet

Livio

oh right thanks

sophia

For the 2 outliers I used teleporting, which I think is common.

I personally don’t really like teleporting unless it makes sense for the game

I think there are some interesting experiments happening but it’s a hard problem because motion sickness is a real problem. I think the game Climbey does a decent job of making the walking and jumping feel more natural because you move your arms for movement

Livio

Last time we had Victor from Invrse talking about his crazy locomotion experiments. You have to come to comotion and try them out sometime. They’re weird.

sophia

I’ve seen a cool locomotion mechanic in a snowball fighting game where you throw a snowball-like object where you want to be teleported to and that worked really well for the game

Victor is great 😃 I will definitely have to try them out.

I’ve been interested in where eye tracking tech will bring us

I think there can be really natural ways of navigating UI and 3D space with eyetracking

Livio

oh interesting, i never considered that combination before

sophia

Yeah! There are already some HMDs with eyetracking and I think it will add a lot. I’ve also been wanting to experiment with shifting your environment around you in subtle ways that is sort of like the environment locomoting around you, but as part of the game

the “play area” is an interesting constraint right now that may not apply at all to AR

Ian P

Do you know many VR apps or games, and do you have a favorite?

sophia

I have tried a lot of different VR apps and was just compaining today that I should be spending more time in VR ha :p My favorite game is probably Castle Must Be Mine, it’s a tower defense game like Kingdom Rush but in VR and does some cool perspective shifting that you can really only do in VR

I also really love VR games that get you moving around like Climbey and Eleven table tennis

Some of my favorite VR experiences are by Cabbibo (http://cabbi.bo/) and they are a bit trippy but super cool

Back to your question Livio, before I worked at Pluto I had some interest in VR because it’s hard to avoid VR when you’re working on games and I worked on a fun project that was a basic cloth simulation in VR which turned out really cool. But I really got sucked in while working there and was exposed to all of the exciting stuff happening in the industry

Livio

What do you think helped you get the job at Pluto? Like what are some tips that might help the students here land similar jobs?

Jeanenne Campbell

How much experience do you need for VR if you want to work for a game company? Can you get hired with no experience in VR?

sophia

I think one of the best things about VR and about games is that they are so cross disciplinary. There are so many different needs to fill. It depends on the company but many will hire junior people without formal work experience if they have worked on projects and collaborated with others on projects

Jeanenne Campbell

Thanks for your answer. 😊

sophia

I think many companies look at it the way we do, it’s okay if you don’t have VR experience because the VR industry is pretty small. We want solid engineers or artists or w/e that are adaptable because VR changes a lot

the hardware and platforms are still in constant flux

Livio

Yeah while freelancing I’ve met clients who don’t know what the technical differences are and they say “I need a programmer with experience in VR” but a real dev team would know whether or not the project requirements actually demand that experience. Most of the time, not really. For any VR project, it’s mostly just normal 3D game development problems, with a small touch of VR specific problems thrown on top

sophia

Yep! I think there are a lot of cool new UX problems to explore but they will need to same skillset as other types of companies

Ian P

Can you explain what Pluto VR is? The website syas, “communicate direclty in VR,” so is it it like a digitalgathering place?

Livio

^ that sounds like a good last question. Ending with a plug 😃

sophia

Haha sure! Pluto is a communication app that allows you to see your friends around you while in VR similar to just being next to someone in real life. The amount of presence you feel while in a Pluto conversation is uncanny, you can see people’s body language and it really feels like they are in 3D space with you. You can use Pluto while also running other VR apps, so I can be painting something in tiltbrush while you’re playing space pirate trainer, and we can still see each other’s avatars the entire time. It’s similar to how people use skype while playing a game or facetime to chat “face to face” but done in VR where the experience feels more real

Livio

Thanks for speaking with us Sophia! This was great!

Ian P

Yeah, thanks a ton for talking with us!

sophia

Thanks for inviting me 😃 it went by fast!

Jeanenne Campbell

Thank you for coming Sophia! Really appreciate it 😃

sophia

y’all were great 😃

👋