The thing I love about programming is because it’s fun to see how things work out the way you design it to be. Actually, it’s funnier sometimes when things don’t go according to your design.

It goes doubly so for 3D content development.

However, there are usually more headaches in development when you start considering the hardware you want to deploy to.

Coming from mobile app development, I know first hand how hard it is just synchronizing between Android and iOS.

Now this hold true by a magnitude in the XR ecosystem. Every few months there is a new headset coming. Each with their own set of SDK written in many different programming languages.

Though a good programmer is expected to learn at least one new language every year, learning one every few months is too much. Especially if you’re not sure how long that headset is gonna be around.

Moreover, developing for multiple platforms the native way is an effort that grows exponentially. Imagine the technical debt down the road.

That’s why I always recommend developers to learn Unity if they want to take a dive into AR/VR/MR.

Here’s why:

1. Started as 3D game engine, Unity is already at the top of the field. Needless to say it’s easy to get your 3D models interact with each other in Unity. The workflow is solid.
2. Strong forum community. Almost any kind of question you can think of are already asked.
3. Massive learning resources. Both first-party and third-party. Most free tutorials are so good you can even land your first job just by learning from them. Some of the higher quality ones are available at very affordable price points. Definitely much cheaper than any college.
4. Great asset store. Cut down your development time significantly by purchasing ready-to-use assets. It definitely makes more sense to spend $50 rather than spend 2 weeks modeling the same asset yourself. I can’t even begin to count how many crunch jobs I survived because of Unity asset store.
5. Build once, deploy everywhere. Sure there are some specific APIs that are available only for certain hardware, but for most part as long as the content mechanic remains the same, only slight modifications are needed to support a new platform. And that’s why…
6. Most new devices coming to the market is working with Unity beforehand. By the time the device is out, Unity often already has the SDK supported.

Getting started is free. And the monthly subscription plan is very reasonable.

Unity’s motto is to democratize content development for Game, AR, VR and Film. Seeing the many projects done in Unity, this motto is no mere empty words.

Unity CEO, John Riccitiello said that Two Thirds of VR and AR Apps Are Built with Unity… and I’m not surprised.

It’s one of the skills I’m glad I spent my free time to learn back in my early days. I really recommend Unity for aspiring XR content creators.