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Welcome to the vrkspace wiki!

The vision:

• By 2021 as a software developer I want to work from home in a virtual office instead of taking a 30+ minute drive in a self driving car.
• The virtual workspace should lead to a higher productivity with almost limitless virtual screen space for code, cheat sheets an communications. Optional voice commands can make it more efficient.
• By giving it a a multi user component the user of the workspace can easily switch between working in isolation mode or to be able to collaborate and interact with coworkers as if in a real office
• It should be expandable into other professions beyond software developement that make people more productive working, learning or communicating from a virtual desk rather then a physical one.
• To build a broad community by keeping the plattform open to contributors of various fields like web developers, 3D designers, educators and communicators.
• The fundamental concepts like organisation and interaction should work well in VR and AR alike.

Virtual Desk vs Virtual Home / Holodeck

In contrast to Valve/ Facebook or Microsoft the goal of this project is not to create a virtual home. The goal is to think smaller and primarily create a virtual desk. The VRKSpace is a small virtual working environment focus on productivity rather then exploring a virtual world. I don’t want to walk into another room of my virtual home to view if someone contacted me on discord and I dont want to pick up a file and flush it down a virtual toilet in my virtual bathroom of my virtual home just to delete it. The virtual desk is a seated or standing environment that tries to replace everyday workflow in a highly optimized manner. Its modular and networkable so you can put two or more desks together to get a virtual workspace for collaborating and teaching. To switch from desk to explore mode it should be possible to launch a scene from your desk and step into a virtual environment.

The hardware

• From simple mobile phone sollutions to dedicated HMDs the project will try to accommodate as many devices as possible.
• We assume that a productive version of the project is about 2 years away. By that time we assume devices should be more affordable and more importantly have resolutions that allow easy and confortable work with text documents, i.e. code.
• Whenever specialized hardware/ physical objects can contribute to efficiency and ergonomics they should be supported but not mandatory. One such an example is a handtracking module together with a physical keyboard.

The software

For the start of the project the main components are A-Frame and node.js. A-Frame to make it more accesible for webdevelopers to develop the 3D Visuals. NodeJS to have a personal server for the user to access APIs like chat apps, calendars, cloud drives and such as well to access the local file system if the user desires to do so. The system should allow for easy integration of plugins like skype, discord or slack for communication. These plugins should be self contained both in visualization and function.

On a personal note: