DIGM 540

 No visual update, got pulled away by other homework. In the little downtime I did have, I have been looking at the documentation. I'm trying to make sure as I go through the tutorial I'm understanding what I'm looking at rather than just getting through it, because if I just wanted the VR controller that's what the default project is for.  This was a pretty good starting spot to dig through blueprints:  https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/ProgrammingAndScripting/Blueprints/BestPractices/ It helped me to read exactly what these certain parent classes were and what I was making rather than just making the blueprints according to the tutorial.  Hopefully, I can get back to development soon.

Finally, time to get into Unreal.   Upon opening it, I decided to check out the VR Starter scene and see what that was all about. At that point I was faced with a choice, I could either  A. Use the starter scene to have a VR controller and try to do something unique with it or B. Start with a blank scene and continue with the making my own controller Idea for now As I thought about that I realized I had no idea how anything in that starter scene worked, so building something unique off of that would be pretty tricky. So in the essence of learning, I decided to stick to option B.  In the talks in class on Thursday, an idea was proposed to me as well that I thought might be helpful which was to make things in blueprints first, then try to convert them to C++ after the fact. At first, I was pretty confident like "Yeah if something is difficult maybe but I'll just see about coding first" but now Im realizing just how little Unreal I am familiar with.  I'm currently makin...

 Over the past week, I have put together materials and now I want to put together a rough timeline for the remaining work. So far the plan is as follows: Week 4: Start development on the VR project and get the project set up Week 5: Get more of the project done, re-evaluate the endpoint of the project and what the goals are  Week 6-10 will be based on the final goals determined in Week 5.  So far the plan is to try and have a semi-functional VR demo by around week 5 or 6 that way I can refine not only the VR controls but also the ideas that are a part of the project. 

  Today is another day of material and tutorial gathering before I embark on the testing phase. I found the official documentation of Unreal 4's VR Suite here: https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/SharingAndReleasing/XRDevelopment/VR/  Another quick tutorial by Epic I found: https://youtu.be/Asw4C51RH9I For right now just trying to get the project off the ground, I'm going to start with materials from Epic themselves, and hopefully, they are enough. These tutorials and yesterday's one should get me out of the gate. I will start experimenting within the next few days. 

 Based on what I discussed in class in terms of where my project should go, we decided that starting with a general Unreal VR Space for the first half would be a good jumping-off point, then continuing to refine it in the second half into something a little more unique.  The first major resource I found was this:  https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/courses/5YG/unreal-engine-vr-3d/m221/unreal-engine-2eb563 It's a full tutorial by Epic themselves on getting the movement going in the 3d space. The tutorial and its headings and descriptions are in Japanese, but in the video, Unreal is in English so it should work fine. 

1-18-22 Post 1  This is the initial post to this blog, mainly to test fonts and how it looks as well as get things all set up. In terms of where I would like the project to go, I have had a few ideas over the past week but still lean towards experimenting with VR in some way. I would like to have that a little more refined for tomorrow, figuring out what exactly I plan to do with that if I go with that, but regardless the idea is still the one with the strongest footing