I truly enjoy video production, game art, and programming, but video has become one of the most important skills Iโve developed.
Packaging is everything. I learned that through YouTube, but it applies to games, videos, and even work deliverables.
Donโt just code, lead in your niche. Donโt just make art, build something that represents you. Donโt stay in a bubble, keep expanding your skills.
This post started as simply wanting to share how I go about adding video assets to a project, but instead of doing it the traditional way, I wanted to try something different.
๐ฃ Excited to announce my AWE 2026 talk on Agentic Workflows for VR/MR!
๐๏ธ ๐๐๐ป๐ฒ ๐ญ๐ณ, ๐ฌ๐ญ:๐ฏ๐ฑ ๐ฃ๐ ๐๐ผ ๐ฌ๐ฎ:๐ฌ๐ฌ ๐ฃ๐
๐ ๐ฅ๐ผ๐ผ๐บ ๐ญ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐
Honestly, after spending a lot of time with AI tooling over the past few months, I am extremely excited to share my takeaways:
Whatโs working?
Whatโs not working?
And how am I finding real success when developing VR games in Unity?
๐ก Also, if you have specific questions, let me know. I will make sure to cover any areas that could help with your own development cycles.
My spatial icon setup in Photoshop. The basketball court came from the actual game, the AI ball image was created with GPT Image 2, and I used Adobe AI features to clean it up.
This video also shows how it looks on Meta Quest 3.
๐จ One more week of work, 2-3 hours per day, and this is what I added to ๐ Arcade Hoops:
- New sound visualizer modes: In Room, On Court, or Off
- Visualizers now react to music and game events
- New targets ๐ฏ that add +2 points per hit. Theyโre fully customizable and procedurally generated
- Improved MRUK room detection flow
- 3 new music tracks & new sound effects when the ball hits MRUK walls, ceilings, or the floor
- New warning sound when only 10 seconds are remaining
- 3 new achievements
- Added all the metadata to the Meta Horizon Portal
Itโs getting closer to submission, and honestly, it has been so much fun seeing this game evolve every week. ๐ฅ
I hear a lot of hesitation from VR/MR devs when it comes to adopting agentic workflows, and trust me, I understand.
But after spending the last 2 months getting very deep into these tools, I truly recommend that you start integrating them into your workflows.
You do not need to let go of your code. In fact, you need to be more involved than ever. But these tools can exponentially increase your productivity.
It may not feel that way at the beginning, but the more you use them, the better you become at applying best practices, guiding the tools, and getting real value from them.
Well, the icon is ready to go!
I didn't like the AI look & feel initially so I ended up using a combination of AI graphics + real assets from the game. Curious if anyone can spot what the score value means here?
Iโve been adding polishing touches to my ๐ basketball game prototype, and one area I keep focusing on is onboarding.
Thinking about your players when designing VR/MR experiences is so important. One feature I added checks if the player is outside the scanned room. If they are, I let them keep playing as is or scan the new room to unlock MR features tied to walls, ceilings, floors, and achievements.
Taking a day off today to focus on my new โArcade Hoopsโ MR game. If everything goes as planned, I should be submitting it tonight, and Iโll follow up with a YouTube video talking about everything I learned.
๐จ To everyone who reached out about the Meta layoffs, thank you.
My immediate team was affected, and I am fortunate to still be at Meta, but I do feel that survivor guilt, which is now the second time Iโve had this experience.
Where do I stand? I am extremely sad for those who were let go, people I truly value and respect, all of them extremely talented. We are living through very strange times in tech, with so many things changing so fast.
As of now, I still have a job, and I am taking this time to help developers as much as I can, and to support my co-workers however I can, whether that means recommendations, introductions, or connecting them with companies I have strong relationships with.
So, if you were affected by the Meta layoffs, please reach out. Unity has already reached out to me, and Iโve guided a few people I trust in their direction.
At the end of the day, this is the XR community, and this type of thing can happen to any of us.
Dilmer
Testing a new shader effect for instances where the ball hits the basketball hoop backboard, and the wave effect starts from the hit point and extends to all meshes that are part of the scene model. So if you have walls, tables, etc., they should also be affected. For now, only individual meshes are affected.
My upcoming projects are making me really excited for this year ๐ I have a lot on my plate, but helping devs be successful by sharing my experience is still one of the most important things to me.
This is what Iโm working on:
- Finishing my MR game Arcade Hoops ๐ and launching it for FREE on the Meta Store
- AWE USA XR + AI talk
- New video series on our official Meta Developer Channels ๐ฅ more about this soon!
- Additional Agentic Tools videos on YouTube ๐ ๏ธ
- Brainstorming ideas for my Meta Connect 2026 presence!
It seems like a lot, and a few months ago I would have never imagined making a new game or a video series for Meta. To be honest, trusting my gut and learning on all fronts has been key. If something looks hard, donโt overthink it, just decide and move forward.
๐คฏ More than 100 commits in just 3 weeks of work.
Iโve been spending 2โ3 hours per day on this mini-game, and it has been so much fun. Itโs also incredibly rewarding to see the progress (v1 > v2 > v3 as shown on the image)
I also love that my passion for making games is back. Not that I ever fully lost it, but life gets busy, and the tools we have today allow us to do so much more!
๐จWhat if, instead of just making a basketball ๐ tabletop game, we take advantage of Mixed Reality features too?
For example, what if we added achievements that give players more points when the ball bounces off the ceiling, a wall, a door, the floor, or even the court floor before making the shot?
๐ก Let me know what you think! I have a variety of ideas to extend the game into more fun use cases by taking advantage of Scene Understanding through the Meta Mixed Reality Utility Kit, which is what I am using here.
Weโve all played, or are still playing, casual games on mobile, but I think there is a huge opportunity to bring more casual games into VR/MR! ๐
A great example is how this team is using ๐ hand tracking in a really fun way with their title Awesome Hands, which was also a submission for our 2025 Meta Start Developer Competition!
Awesome Hands comes with 135 handcrafted puzzle levels. You use your palms and fingers to curve the ballโs path, interact with playful hand-based mechanics, and guide it all the way to the goal. The rules are simple, but mastering how your movements influence the ball creates an addicting mix of physical skill and spatial problem-solving.
#xr #devs #games
๐คฏ Itโs been 10 days since I posted my progress on Arcade Hoops ๐
Since then, Iโve added 50+ commits and a variety of new features:
- New onboarding flow with tabletop and floating placement
- Mini tutorial to teach the core mechanic
- Updated basketball with shader-generated lines
- Court and basketball impact shader
- Sound effects for scoring, bouncing, and achievements, also 3 new music tracks
- Full PSDK integration with 1 leaderboard and 10+ achievements
- Achievement toast popup when players unlock one
- Persistent Spatial Anchors, so court placement restores after closing the app
- Debug area to restart onboarding, toggle aiming lines, and view in-game logs
- Improved basketball bounce physics, it feels much more realistic now
- Lastly, A LOT of additional fixes & improvements!
๐กWhatโs next?
- Creating store metadata, screenshots, trailer, and store details
- Then submitting the game ๐ most likely next week!
๐คฏ Pretty crazy to see the interest devs have in using Unity AI + Agentic Tools for VR/MR on my channel.
I love working with these tools and will keep advocating for their proper use, not to replace you at all, but to use them in a way that helps you become unstoppable through exponential productivity, which is exactly what Iโm experiencing with my latest game.
Pretty humbling to remember the first day I opened Unity 10 years ago, and now to see my latest VR demo showcased within our developer tools.
Whatever you do today, trust your gut, work hard, and never stop!
At first, I was thinking about making a variety of VR/MR games as I use our new AI tools, which Iโll still do, but now my mind is also moving toward extending some of our own tools!
I canโt wait to share another idea I have in the making lol. Itโs something we truly need for hand tracking, more coming soon!
I canโt wait to show you all the results of my latest VR/MR prototype ๐คฏ honestly close to 100 commits added since I posted about it. I am adding an incredible new feature, stay tuned and will post a short video here this weekend.