Hello everyone!
My name is Joseph Simpson (@vrhermit in most places). I’ve recently started exploring PlayCanvas and I’m super impressed with what I’ve seen so far. I know that I’ve only scratched the surface and I’m excited to learn more and start using PlayCanvas for some of my projects.
While I’m not interested in making games primarily, I’m enthusiastic about virtual reality. I’m most interested in making VR user interfaces that can replace or augment traditional computing. Less time on a keyboard, more time in 3D space. I think PlayCanvas support for WebXR and the UI features have a lot to offer for the type of projects that I work on.
I’m familiar with Unreal and Unity, but I got sick of working in native code, dealing with code signing, app stores, etc. I’ve spent my down time lately exploring Three JS, A-Frame, and Babylon JS. I’ve made the most progress with Babylon JS and will likely use it for many things, but I’m open to using PlayCanvas as well. I may even build some small projects in both engines to further explore when I’d use one over the other.
Working in the Editor has been amazing. I’m constantly amazed at the attention to detail that went into every feature. It’s easy to learn and familiar to anyone who has worked in 3D before. Seeing changes to entities taking place in real time on other devices blew me away.
Scripting is also impressive. The code editor is clean and easy to use, with great auto-complete and documentation. Scripting is packed full of quality-of-life improvements such as component attributes or the asset registry.
I think the things that have impressed me the most are the things that I haven’t had to do. No NPN setup, no package.json file, dependency management, command line tools, etc. This stuff drives me nuts when starting a new project. PlayCanvas lets me skip all of that and jump right into creativity mode and start making things.
As you can tell, I’m pretty excited. I look forward to learning more and to using PlayCanvas in my projects. Thanks for making such an awesome tool. I only wish I had started with it sooner.
Joseph Simpson