(Virtual) Art School Confidential
The next demo was a much-enhanced of Skillman & Hackett’s Tilt Brush VR painting application that is already available on Android (for Google Cardboard) and for Oculus Rift. You can see a screenshot from that version below (but note that the UI for the Vive version is substantially different).
I found myself standing in a dark space, and the controllers became my painting tools – my right hand was my brush and my left was my pallet. I was able to touch the brush to a color wheel on the pallet to change the color of the paint, and I could also use the trackpad on the left-hand controller to scroll through different brush types. Because my time was limited, and I was already so overwhelmed by the experience, the only thing I could think to do was draw my name, which hung there in three-dimensional space.
On the suggestion of a colleague who had tried the Vive before me, I then changed my brush and paint color and tried to paint over the same strokes I had just made. What I wanted to see is how accurate the depth tracking of my hands was and to see if I could reach out to the very same spot in space again.
It turned out that I could. I was able to precisely paint over both the front and back of the strokes I initially made. As I was doing this, I was walking around my painting without even thinking and was able to lean in closer so I could precisely apply the second layer of paint.
Throughout the demo, I never once had to consciously think about how to move to where I wanted to be, or how far to move my arm to paint where I wanted to. I just did it, and my real-world actions were perfectly translated to the digital world.
