Nebula VR
Nebula VR is an upcoming start-up company focusing on the design and manufacture of peripheral devices for Virtual Reality. I started this project in the later half of 2017 and have developped several concepts of products
The first product, that also lead to the conception of NebulaVR is the Aurora VR stylus.
Development
The concept
Aurora is a stylus for 3d drawing, sculpting and design in Virtual reality.
The Aurora stylus makes the creation of 3d models easy and intuitive, by enabling the user to directly interact with the models, within a virtual environment, using a tool, specially designed for the purpose of manipulating with 3d objects.
The project started in September 2017 and for the first few months till November 2017 it was an entirely solo project lead by myself, as part of a design project course at The Hague University.
During this first part of the project I developped the concept, made ergonimic studies, low-fi prototypes and the concept design among other things. I defined an ergonomic shape which would later serve as a base for the improved models. I designed posters and defined a visual style for the branding and did extensive research into the VR market.
In November 2017 the project was chosen by the course tutors as one of the selected projects that would continue to be further developped.
Expanded concepts
In January of 2018 I presented 2 improved concepts of the stylus.
The first concept was made symmetrical and more ergonomic.
The second includes a removable battery, which reduces downtime for the user, as the need to wait for the device to fully charge is eliminated.
Both concepts were now usable by both the right and left handed.
From February till April 2018 the stylus was realized into a fully functional design and hi-fi prototype.
The new design of the stylus was influenced by user research done in the previous months using prototypes of the older concepts as well as by research into the VR peripheral market, cost analysis and technical requirements.
The shape of the stylus was redesigned to fit the HTC Vive Tracker, which extends the products usability while significantly reducing the cost.
Prototype
The design is also ambidextrous. It has a symmetrical and ergonomic shape and features several programmable buttons, that can be individualy assigned with funcitons by the user.
The stylus makes use of the HTC Vive tracker, which provides tracking in 3d space as well as power and communication with the PC.
