Udacity VR Developer

Today is the day everyone at Udacity—and 23,000 of you!—have been waiting for. I am very pleased to announce that our new VR Developer Nanodegree program is now officially open for enrollment.

This is your invitation to join the creative revolution, and on behalf of Udacity, and our partners Google VR, HTC Vive, and Upload, I would like to welcome everyone who wants to become a VR Developer. Are you ready?

Enroll today at udacity.com/vr, and expect to hit the ground running. First things first, you’ll receive a free Udacity VR viewer* to use with your smartphone. This is important, because within your first week, you’ll build your very own VR app and load it onto your Android or iPhone! From there, you’ll start learning everything there is to know about 3D scenes and objects, interactions, scripting, design, ergonomics, UI best practices, and much, much more. You can complete the entire program using your smartphone, though if you do have a high-end VR system such as the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift, we offer a High-Immersion VR track as well.

There is no better time to get involved with the world of VR. The excitement is incredible! Consider what has taken place in just the four weeks since we first announced our program:

  • Google unveiled the Daydream View—a beautiful VR headset and controller for your Android smartphone that takes mobile phone-based VR to a whole other level.
  • Oculus announced a new stand-alone VR system at their closely-followed Oculus Connect 3 conference, plus an additional $250m in funding for the VR developer community.
  • PlayStation VR launched to the public, and is now available to the 40 million plus people worldwide with a Playstation 4.
  • Valve, who worked closely with HTC to build the powerful Vive system, showcased their new controller prototypes that promise to get your VR experience to another level of ergonomics and immersion.
  • Oculus announced Asynchronous Spacewarp (ASW)—a technology that enables high quality, fully immersive VR on much less expensive computers than before. (Next up, the Oculus Touch controllers becoming available!).

Did I mention that 23,000 of you signed up to be notified about our launch date? Yes, that happened too!

We couldn’t be more excited, and we are so proud of our VR team and the amazing content they’ve developed for you. As our Lead Content Developer Matt Sonic (@mattsonic) recently said: “Our early testers are super happy. We’re going to double the number of great VR Developers worldwide!“

Making the decision to pursue a career in VR can literally be life-changing. We spent some time recently talking with three VR experts about their decisions to commit to VR—one of the many great perks of this program is the opportunity to learn from inspiring people like Dioselin Gonzalez (@dioselin), VR Principle Engineer at Unity Technologies, Azad Balabanian (@azadux), Creative Lead at Upload, and Andrey Doronichev (@dobry), Group Product Manager for VR Products at Google:

“I changed my career to VR because I firmly believe that virtual reality is the future of computing. So, for me it was a way to help define the future of computing, and learn critical skills that will make me relevant to this industry for the next decade.” —Andrey Doronichev, Group Product Manager, VR Products, Google

Our instructors our ready, our partners are ready, and the program is ready. All we need is you. Enroll today, and join us for the creative revolution!

VR Developer Nanodegree program

 Udacity VR Developer Nanodegree program

*while supplies last

Christian Plagemann
Christian Plagemann
Christian Plagemann is VP, Learning Products, at Udacity. Previously, he co-founded the Virtual Reality team at Google, and was the engineering manager responsible for Google Cardboard and the Daydream VR platform. Prior to Google, Christian worked on the autonomous car at the Artificial Intelligence Lab of Stanford University. He co-founded the 3D Vision Lab and Numovis Inc., a tech startup focused on motion tracking and computer vision for user interaction. Christian has a PhD in computer science from the Department of Computer Science of the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Germany (Autonomous Intelligent Systems).