From our first winter challenge to AR House to having early access to Lightship VPS, Dakota Vincent of Future House studios is a vital part of the Lightship developer community.. Hear more about his journey to AR, his work in the metaverse, and what inspires his projects in this third installment of our Developer Spotlight series.

To kick us off, can you share a little more about yourself and the projects you’re working on?

Hi! My name is Dakota and I am a developer at Future House Studios. I haven’t been in the development field for a long time, only graduating with my degree in Computer Science in 2020. Since joining up with FHS things have definitely taken an exciting turn.

At FHS, we work extensively in Metaverse applications across several different industries. Some notable examples of our work include: animation work for film/television/games, interactive virtual concerts for A-list artists, virtual reality events for unicorn companies featuring a former US president, and AAA VR and AR game development.

I was fortunate enough to be able to work on some of the projects mentioned above, as well as other XR related projects we have going on in the background. My favorite was helping on the WaveXR live virtual concert for Justin Bieber. Admittedly, I am still very new to the field, but I’ve found it extremely rewarding to find new and exciting things that capture my attention around every corner.

During this last year, I have been able to work on 4 unique Lightship-related projects (Duel of Wizards, Defender, Sundae Sundae Sundae, and Swords!). Each of these projects were similar in design, but vastly different in the application of the tech. The more I work in AR, the more new applications of this technology come to my mind and excite me.

How did you begin building AR experiences in the first place?

The launch of the Lightship platform is what got me started in the AR space actually. After the launch keynote for Niantic Lightship in November, there were a few of us at the studio excitedly discussing how we could play around with the new tech and come up with something really fun.

When the Winter Challenge came around, we knew this was our opportunity to jump onto Lightship and make our creative discussions a reality. We were ecstatic to have such an amazing opportunity to show off what we were capable of. We put our heads together and in less than 2 weeks came up with the prototype for Duel of Wizards, a spell-binding game. Fortunately we won the award for Best in Sharing in the Winter Challenge. With the award came the opportunity, as a representative of Future House, for me to go to AR House in LA for the entire month of March and learn with some of the best in the industry.

AR House was an amazing experience! While I was there I had the opportunity to work alongside other AR creators and get exclusive workshops with members of the ARDK team. One of the highlights was the opportunity to work on the VPS beta and start developing with it before it was released to the rest of the community. At the end we got to show off our work we spent the last month building. This is where I came up with the idea for Defender.

AR House sounds amazing! For some of your more recent projects, what was your inspiration? Can you share more details on how you developed it?

The last project we worked on was a game that we are calling Swords! It is a small demo of a much larger game that we’ve been working on. The inspiration for it comes from legends, myths, and books telling of far off places and exciting adventures. It’s those fantastical stories that have always captivated me and been an inspiration for a lot of our work. It might sound a bit cheesy, but it’s the desire to bring those to life that has been our inspiration.

The nice part about the current state of the Lightship ARDK is that it has a lot of prebuilt templates. These serve as excellent starting points for several types of projects. On our most recent project we ended up choosing the VPS template, because it was a new template and we really wanted to get a taste of what it was capable of. From there it was just a matter of adding in our own assets and code to really drive the experience. This included some custom models and other Lightship features such as its depth detection, occlusion, semantic segmentation, and plane detection.

Do you have any tips for developers starting to work within Unity or within Lightship for the first time?

The key is to start small. Build something small and simple that isn’t AR related. Lightship is built off of the Unity platform which greatly differs from other AR development platforms like Lens Studio or SparkAR. Learning Unity and understanding it is vital to being able to fully take advantage of Lightship’s capabilities. Mastering the basics of Unity is the first step to learning and understanding the Lightship platform.

To get a strong grasp on the basics of Unity, I would recommend looking on YouTube for tutorials on how to build a simple iOS or Android game in Unity. Once you have built this out, it should help you feel comfortable enough to take the next step and integrate Lightship. The Lightship team has prepared fantastic tutorials that walk you through that process step by step. My point is rooted in the thought that by building a simple app you can fully focus on learning the ARDK, and not be stuck on issues like how to navigate Unity’s UI or how to bring in external assets.

For starting with Lightship, I recommend beginning by doing a lot of little tests vs. one big project. When you’re first starting off, it can be difficult to wrap your head around the different use cases of AR and Lightship’s features. Look through the Discord for inspiration and try to do something similar or just build off of an existing Lightship template. Show off your work and get feedback from the community. Never be afraid to ask questions!

Speaking of the Discord, you’re very active in the Lightship community — what do you enjoy most about building with a community of developers?

I love the creativity and the help that is built into the community. It is amazing to see what other people come up with and it gives me a ton of inspiration for the endless possibilities of the tech. The community never ceases to amaze me as I see each new AR application released.

It is super rare to see a community like Lightship’s that is engaged and committed to helping anybody learn. I love that there are monthly learning sessions where anyone can go in and ask questions. Niantic really wants its users to learn the platform. These sessions are incredible just for that and will help give you a leg up on any other developer outside the community.

Final question, you mentioned Future House Studios is focused on building metaverse applications. Do you personally have a vision for the real-world metaverse?

I want the real-world metaverse to be both seamless in use and application. I know that is a pretty common desire for AR, but the more I use it and play around with it the more it becomes apparent. People want things to be easy, the more that is true the wider the adoption. When applying it to real life it shouldn’t be a standout feature. Rather be a tool that feels natural and can slide into our lives. AR glasses will be a huge step towards this!

Interested in connecting with developers like Dakota Vincent? Join our discord to build and learn from others in the Lightship community.