12/21/2024

Virtual Reality – Which Programming Languages Do You Need to Learn?

3 min read

Virtual Reality, first it’s there, then it’s not there, now it’s there again. Just like Bitcoin, Virtual Reality rises and falls in its popularity and value. Well, not like Bitcoin. Virtual Reality will be here to stay, it only required people to get used to the motion sickness and AMD and Nvidia to catch up with the demands of the market. A similar thing happened when online casinos first appeared: nobody thought that they would become popular, and today, millions of people are gambling online with the pokerstars bonus code.

On a serious note, VR requires hardware which can render frames smoothly, above 90 frames per second. Note the word smoothly, that means that frame times need to be absolutely smooth, without drops. You are viewing something through goggles and any and all stutters can literally make you sick. Once that criteria was met and graphics card started rendering high detail environments without so much as a stutter, programmers had to adapt, as VR was slowing down for a while.

You want to learn to code for VR, right? Well, here are the languages which you will need to know, the basic ones without which VR development will be next to impossible.

Java

Oh boy, not Java? Yes, Oracle’s baby, well, not Oracle’s, but later acquired by Oracle. Java is important for virtual reality because it is one of the older and simpler languages which you can master and still code effectively for virtual reality. While older, it can still generate the 3D images necessary for virtual reality. It might not be the best choice if you want to make an actual video game, but for 3D scenes, it can still do the job right, especially since it is one of the first languages which college students come into contact with.

JavaScript

You can’t do internet without JavaScript. You could, but you would make your life a bit more complicated. JavaScript can be understood by most browsers that exist online, making your job as a programmer much easier, especially if you want to make VR apps and games for the internet. This means you can bridge the gap between platforms and make your content available for most devices. This does require a lot of effort, but given how JS is widely regarded as one of the best languages for web coding, you should give it a try, if you’re into web development and VR.

C# – Unity!

Unity is one of the best engines you can learn to code for, and it uses C#. An object oriented language which can do wonders for your virtual reality scenes. C# is a bit more complex than the other languages on the list, but it is worth it. Unity is available on Mac and Windows PCs. Unity is free until you earn a certain amount of money on a yearly basis, so there’s also that. But, if you want something more powerful, you have to dedicate yourself a bit more.

C++

This is one of those languages which takes time to master, lots of time, as well as effort. It is an amazing language, which when mastered, can make great and fast applications. The Unreal Engine uses C++ and it is, without a doubt, one of the most powerful engines you can get your hands on. You can make amazing scenes and video games in VR with Unreal, but you need to master C++, which takes more time than C#, objectively. 

If you want to code in VR, these are the languages which you need to master. There are others like Python, but these ones should cover you, from basic scenes to more complicated ones, not to mention full, complex video games. VR is the future, will you learn to code for it?