Dream Stream✨

🏖️🍄 A truly immersive VR party experience that pushed the medium into an exciting new place.

While at Buck, I was fortunate to work on a huge number of creative projects with the most incredible people. Dream Stream, though, holds a special place for me and is the project that I’m most proud of.

Party Time?

I’m not in love with social VR. There are too many experiences where you wonder: are we all pretending to have fun, or is that just me? That was on my mind when Buck announced they would be developing this year’s VR holiday party from the ground-up rather than using an existing platform. Also on my mind was the concept of parallel play—how shared activities can facilitate conversation by reducing the pressure to even start a conversation.

I wanted to do whatever was possible to eliminate putting people in situations where they teleport into a semi-circle and fake a “Heh, this is cool (now what??).” I thought if playful and novel locomotion was central to the experience, moving around itself could serve as a fun distraction enough for parallel play to do its work.

Dreaming Big

At the same time, the pandemic had me missing being around friends in pools, missing Disneyland, feeling wistful about old float trips and fantasizing about a superior dark-ride-style lazy river experience.

On top of that, I really had the classic arcade game Toobin’ on my mind, and often think about how many classic arcade games are still ripe for being adapted into XR in some way.

So when it was announced that this year’s VR holiday party would be built on the Normcore stuff Anthony and I had been testing, I mentioned all this to him. More, I kinda complained about all this to him. I actually didn’t want to do a VR party. Why can’t we just do Toobin’ in VR instead?

I was ready to drop the notion and just implement whatever ideas came down the pike, but he immediately responded to everything I said.

Fast forward a little more, and Anthony has a first working proof of concept of floating physics objects in a networked environment with rudimentary flow.

I added the first version of the paddle controls, and we were both surprised when our first version was instantly recognized by both of us as good enough to sell the entire concept. A little co-jamming later, and we had our first test environment that was good enough to invite creative and leadership in for a test float.

First Float

Once the prototype was working well enough to try a larger group, we did the first test float with Buck’s finest Creative Directors.

Seeing someone enter a room, figure out how to paddle around, then later excitedly swim over to a newcomer and tell them “hey, we’re over this way”—it was magical. Very quickly the entire experience felt fun and naturalistic.

More and more people started showing up, and eventually we had a full group for a float through. After a few impromptu races and unauthorized limit-pushing of the minimal proof of concept, the swell of excitement settled, and we actually began floating—a cluster of tubes going down a basic prototype environment.

The feeling was magical. Everyone in that initial float approved of the concept and saw its potential. There was a moment when the excitement and conversation died down, and I realized that we had all simultaneously been zoning out in silence together. Just admiring the extremely basic temp skybox and environment as it passed us by.

What I realized is that the concepts I was interested in were already working, even at this level. We were behaving as though we were at a real float together. The social experience contained the same organic ebbs and flows that the experiential experience does.

The social, environmental and interactive experiences were one and the same, and the rhythms of that experience all waved in concert of natural ebbs and flows. We were just vibing!

Quickly after that float, the project was approved.

My Contributions

Dream Stream was dreamed up by the Buck collective, with 113+ people contributing in some way. Here’s what I brought to it:

Initial Concept & Prototype — I came up with the initial concept and prototyped the first demo with Anthony Enns.

Creative & Technical Guidance for VR — Much care was taken in training up non-VR people with best practices for comfort and rendering performance. I wanted to emphasize that everything we were about to build had already been invented, and that we should study the work of John Hench, Walt Disney and the Imagineers in creating environments suitable for exploration and play.

The medium of VR—especially rendering on mobile hardware—is perfectly suited for stealing as much as possible from dark ride design. When you turn a corner, you’re in a completely different environment. This also helps artists create environments that are well-optimized for mobile hardware by design—the areas players see at any moment are easy to render in chunks.

We now had a reason to talk about Weenies at Buck.

Obstacle Avoidance System — Early prototypes could result in claustrophobia-inducing tube pile-ups or uncomfortably-close spacing. I built the system that ensured user comfort and prevented tube clustering, keeping the experience smooth and nausea-free. It’s invisible, and might be the technical achievement I’m most proud of on this project.

Terrain Importer — I created the import pipeline for converting environment meshes to Unity terrain.

Buck Snap Camera — The photo scavenger hunt mini-game that gave players something to do and discover throughout the experience.

UI & Onboarding — Implimented the UI, Avatar selection and onboarding scene scripting.

Multiplayer Bug Testing — Lots and lots of testing and prototyping. Creating test zones to help determine the parameters for optimal user comfort and fun.

Dream Team

From 2019–2024, I worked on XR projects at Buck with incredible people I now consider close friends. While every project involved wonderful collaborators across disciplines, a core development team solidified during a string of intense (yet fun) projects: myself, Anthony Enns, and Thomas Robertson.

We developed such a shorthand—and such a complementary blend of skillsets—that it became difficult to remember exactly who did what. Anthony built out API libraries, custom tooling, and shaders. Thomas handled 3D integration, materials, and optimization. I focused on UI, user interaction systems, and scene setup. But the lines blurred constantly: any two of us could tackle a problem together, and the best ideas came from all of us.

Lucky

I felt so secure and so lucky to know that the art and design of the worlds were in such amazing hands and minds that I completely put it out of my mind and focused on implementation. I helped guide the thinking of the creative directors early, describing what I thought caused the magic of the initial successful group float, as well as my our overall vision for the project.

When it was all wrapped and finished, Phil Sierzega asked me if this was the vision I had in mind. It was such an overwhelming moment because there was only one answer: yes.

I’m grateful for all the close friends I made on Dream Stream and everything I learned about so many things.

Big thanks to Kevin Walker, Ryan McGrath, Marla Anyomi, Christine Choi, Anthony Enns, Charlie Whitney, Thomas Robertson, Audrey Yeo, Gosha Kuznetsov, Jeni Wamberg, Moses Journey, Phil Sierzega, Evan Boehm, Ana Bernus, Carmel Gatchalian, Emily Suvanvej, Mark Kulakoff, Zac Williams, and the entire creative, leadership and production teams across all departments for making it happen!

The final dev meeting before launch