Nanodegree Program
Become a VR Developer
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Enroll by June 11, 2017
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Get notified when the VR Developer Nanodegree program launches.
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Time
3 Terms — 2 months each
Study 8 hrs/week and complete in 6 mo.
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Classroom Opens
June 12, 2017
Classroom opens in 10 days.
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Student Rating
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Estimated Salary
Based on US job data
Prerequisites and Requirements
This program features three terms, each of which is 2 months long, as follows:
- Term 1: Foundations
- Term 2: Essentials
- Term 3: Concentrations
When you enroll, you’ll self-select your starting point as either Term 1 or Term 2, depending on your current skills and experience:
- If you’re new to Unity, you’ll select Term 1.
- If you have a working knowledge of Unity as a game developer or digital storyteller, you’ll select Term 2.
- Every student will ultimately advance to Term 3.
Access to certain combinations of hardware is required!
All students will need a modern smartphone:
- Android users (comparable to Nexus 5, Galaxy S5, or later) will need a computer running Mac OS X (10.8+) or Windows (7, 8, or 10) to deploy their VR apps.
- iPhone users (iPhone 5 or later) will need a Mac running Mac OS X (10.8+) to deploy their VR apps.
Students who choose the High-Immersion Unity or High-Immersion Unreal concentration will need:
- VR-ready PC (Intel i5 or greater, high-end graphics card)
- HTC Vive or Oculus Rift
In Collaboration With
Why Take This Nanodegree Program?
In this program, you’ll gain the skills needed to develop world-class Virtual Reality content. You’ll master the core principles of VR development and design, learn to turn your creative ideas into high-performance VR applications, and pursue an advanced concentration as you transform from VR generalist to in-demand specialist.
Get your FREE*
Samsung Gear 360
VR is where hardware and software combine to make magic. That's why we're offering enrolled students in our VR Developer program a free Samsung Gear 360. All you need to bring is your imagination.
Our Hiring Partners
Learn with the Best
Christian Plagemann
Curriculum Developer
Christian co-founded the VR Team at Google, started the VR Nanodegree program at Udacity, and developed this VR curriculum together with our partners and the team.
Matt Sonic
Product Lead
Matt is a serial entrepreneur, artist, engineer, and founder of SFVR. His specialties are: virtual reality, computer graphics, interaction design, and high-performance programming.
Vasanth Mohan
Content Developer
Vasanth previously worked at Stanford's Virtual-Human Interaction Lab. In addition to Udacity, he is also working on an initiative called FusionEd to help raise aware for VR and inspire more people to get started creating content.
Suzanne Leibrick
Content Developer
Suzanne is an independent VR designer. She is also a cofounder of ARVR Academy, a non-profit that teaches women VR and AR development at low cost, and aims to create gender parity in the VR and AR industry in 5 years.
Austin McCasland
Content Developer
Austin is a virtual reality user experience designer. His background is in interactive sculptural new media, and he has a Masters degree in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University.
Sky Nite
Content Developer
Sky, also Head of Education at Upload VR, uses a combination of entrepreneurship, design, authorship, and engineering to create beneficial systems and media which will build cooperation towards an ever-improving future.
Chris Birke
Content Developer
Chris Birke is an experienced game developer devoted to GPU programming, procedural generation, and emergent technologies for VR, who hopes to bring new life and expression to future digital worlds.
Joe Radak
Content Developer
Joe is an independent game developer from New Jersey. He graduated with a degree in Astrophysics from Penn State University and is currently spending his time exploring VR game development with Unreal Engine 4.
Course Path
Self-select your starting point as either Term 1 or Term 2, depending on your current skills and experience. If you're new to VR, select Term 1. If you have a working knowledge of Unity as a game developer or digital storyteller, select Term 2. All students will ultimately move to Term 3.
Term 1
Foundations
Learn the Unity game engine, C#, and Google Cardboard to master the foundations of VR development.
Term 2
Essentials
Learn VR design best-practices for proper ergonomics, user testing, interface design, and more.
Term 3
Concentrations
Dive deep into Mobile Performance & 360 Media, High-Immersion Unity, or High-Immersion Unreal.
What You Will Learn
Download SyllabusVR Developer Syllabus
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Term 1
Foundations
See Less Details
Prerequisite Knowledge
No programming experience is required for the VR Developer Nanodegree program. See detailed requirements.
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Introduction to Virtual Reality
Learn the principles of VR technology, and use that knowledge to create a comfortable, high-performance VR application using Unity.
Udacity Carnival
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VR Scenes & Objects
Use the Unity Game Engine to build beautiful, performant VR scenes. Learn about 3D transforms and materials, and experiment with animations, cameras, and lighting.
Build an Apartment
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VR Software Development
Learn how to make VR experiences more dynamic and responsive to your users by applying basic programming constructs such as methods, loops, variables, and events.
A Maze
Term 2
Essentials
See Less Details
Prerequisite Knowledge
You must have a working knowledge of Unity as a game developer or digital storyteller. See detailed requirements.
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VR Design
Learn VR design fundamentals such as ergonomics, user testing, and interface design, and build a solid foundation to approach any VR design task.
Puzzler
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VR Platforms and Applications
Survey current VR trends and technology, research an area of interest, choose your hardware, and decide which of three Concentrations you want to pursue.
Night at the Museum
Term 3
Concentrations
See Less Details
Prerequisite Knowledge
You must successfully complete Term 2 before you can enroll in Term 3. See detailed requirements.
Concentration
Mobile Performance & 360 Media
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From mitigating heat issues to analyzing inefficient algorithms, learn the three most important considerations in mobile VR: performance, performance, and performance!
Tic-Tac-Toe
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Plan a 360 film shoot, master 360 video stitching, and learn audio capture options. Edit with Adobe Premiere, and use Unity for interactions, effects, and controls.
The Protagonist Journey
The Storyteller’s Revenge
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Create a VR project of your choosing, using any hardware, then complete a series of VR challenges, winning points as you advance towards your goal.
Capstone
Concentration
High-Immersion Unity
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Learn Vive and Oculus development fundamentals, how to use SteamVR to give your user locomotion and hand physics, and how to maximize performance for Desktop VR.
Rube Goldberg Challenge
Performance Bounceback
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Create a VR project of your choosing, using any hardware, then complete a series of VR challenges, winning points as you advance towards your goal.
Capstone
Concentration
High-Immersion Unreal
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Use Unreal Engine 4 to create VR experiences that utilize 6 degrees of freedom headsets and motion controllers, and master Roomscale and Standing scale VR design.
Kitchen Cleanup
Hide and Seek
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Create a VR project of your choosing, using any hardware, then complete a series of VR challenges, winning points as you advance towards your goal.
Capstone
Project
Udacity Carnival
You’ll start with three carnival games that are out of order. It’s your job to fix them using Unity to correctly wire up the event system. You’ll then customize each game with your own images and text. When you finish, you’ll play the three games and send us your score. You’ll win points, have fun, and learn a lot about event-based programming and art customization inside of Unity.
Project
Build an Apartment
Start off by creating some walls. Load meshes into your scene, place them in 3D space, and give them materials and textures to look realistic. Next, add couches, chairs, tables, and rugs, even a kitchen! Once you’ve finished decorating, be sure to add nice mood lighting. You’ll set up high-performance lighting using Unity’s advanced lightmapping tools. Create the apartment of your dreams, in VR!
Project
A Maze
You’ll build 3D UI, waypoint-based navigation, clickable objects, and utilize spatial audio. Players will navigate the maze then find a key that opens a gate to secret treasure. You’ll use all kinds of VR programming techniques like gaze-based interaction, raycasting, control structures, and more.
Project
Puzzler
Apply design techniques like ergonomics, personas, and rapid-prototyping to create a mobile VR application. You’ll need to iterate, document, and create a public write-up for a new game that asks users to solve a familiar Simon-says-like puzzle in a new way.
Project
Night at the Museum
Construct a virtual reality exhibit about a cutting-edge VR company or technology of your choice. This project showcases locomotion, VR scene design, interactivity, and an understanding of the industry. It's also a lot of fun!
Project
The Protagonist Journey
In this project, you'll do everything you need to prepare for a 360 shoot. You'll write the script, produce the storyboard, and then finally plan the logistics surrounding the shoot. By the end, you'll be prepared to make a great 360 film.
Project
The Storyteller’s Revenge
In this project, you’ll stitch together your own footage (or footage provided). Then, you’ll correct the color and edit the raw footage into a story. Finally, you’ll build a custom 360 video player in Unity and add controls, particles, titles, credits, and at least one interaction (like a button and trigger pull, or a gaze-based interaction). The interaction should trigger a different video, branch the story, or allow for replayability.
Project
Rube Goldberg Challenge
This project is a chance for you to create a fully-functional high-immersion VR game. You’ll create a Rube Goldberg game that challenges players to create contraptions that solve physics puzzles. First you’ll import SteamVR and set up your scene environment. Then you’ll add locomotion, grabbing physics, and a menu system. With the core components built, you’ll create Oculus Rift versions of your code.
Project
Performance Bounceback
Performance optimization is one of the most important skillsets for a VR developer, since apps running below the target framerate are essentially unplayable, causing nausea and discomfort. This project simulates a real-world scenario where a VR game has been hastily built with a focus on functionality rather than performance—you have to make it a performant app ready for release.
Project
Capstone
Work to complete a series of VR challenges, winning points as you progress. Create a VR project of your choosing, using any hardware. Choose from a wide range of achievements like “app store submission,” “use of speech recognition,” or “mixed reality trailer.” Each achievement wins a different number of points. To succeed, you need to reach the required points level.
Project
Hide and Seek
This is your first chance to build an Unreal VR experience based around locomotion. You’ll create a find-the-object style of game, create a set of blueprints that randomly hides an object, and develop a locomotion method that allows you to move around the apartment so you can find the object.
Project
Kitchen Cleanup
This project is your first chance to make a game within Unreal Engine 4 for either standing or roomscale VR. You’ll need to utilize motion controllers to build a kitchen-themed interaction game, and you’ll use functions, physics, blueprint communication, and audio to create an immersive experience. Spawn messy dishes and get them into the sink as quickly as possible!
Project
Tic-Tac-Toe
The game is Tic-Tac-Toe against a friendly AI Robot. While fun and attractive, the only problem is that the experience is completely unoptimized for mobile VR. Your task is to use tools like the Profiler, Frame Debugger, and your raw intuition to optimize this project to run at 60 frames per second on your phone.
“The partnership with Udacity is central to our efforts to disseminate critical information on Samsung technologies to the developer community. Within this framework, the Udacity VR Nanodegree program is an excellent vehicle to engage developers and strengthen the Gear VR ecosystem.”
— Mihai Pohuntu, VP, Emerging Platforms, Samsung Electronics America
Previous
Start Learning Now
Foundations
Term 1
total
If you’re new to Unity, select Term 1, and start learning the foundations of VR development in Unity.
Prerequisites
No coding experience needed.
Essentials
Term 2
total
If you have a working knowledge of Unity as a game developer or digital storyteller, select Term 2.
Prerequisites
Familiarity with Unity required.
All students will ultimately advance to Term 3. Completion of Term 3 is required to graduate.
You'll enroll in Term 3 upon completing Term 2. The cost for Term 3 is $400.
FAQ
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Why should I enroll in the VR Developer Nanodegree program?
Virtual reality (VR) job openings are up 800% year-over-year. Demand for skilled VR developers and designers who can create high-quality content is growing at an unprecedented rate. The goal of this program is to equip you with the skills and experience you’ll need to take advantage of all this incredible opportunity. If you’re ready to start creating memorable and compelling experiences using the very latest virtual reality technologies, then this is the program for you!
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