We get asked "how much for a VR app" a lot, and the honest answer is that three things move the number and almost nothing else does.
1. Content volume. Not features, content. One well-made room costs a fraction of eight rooms. A training simulator with three scenarios is not three times a one-scenario build, but it is not close to the same either. If budget is tight, cut scenes before you cut quality.
2. Standalone versus PC. A Quest headset is a mobile chipset. Art that runs fine on a PC connected headset often needs rebuilding for standalone: fewer draw calls, baked lighting, aggressive LODs. Deciding this late is one of the most expensive changes you can make.
3. Multiplayer. This is the big one. Shared state, networked physics, voice, session handling and the testing that goes with it can easily double a project. Single-user VR is a well-trodden path; synchronised multi-user VR is a different discipline.
Things that move the number far less than people expect: the number of interactions, UI polish, and platform count within the same family.
If someone quotes you a VR project without asking about those three, the quote is a guess.
Happy to sanity-check a scope in this thread. Say what you want to build, on what hardware, for how many simultaneous users, and we will tell you which of the three is about to hurt.
1. Content volume. Not features, content. One well-made room costs a fraction of eight rooms. A training simulator with three scenarios is not three times a one-scenario build, but it is not close to the same either. If budget is tight, cut scenes before you cut quality.
2. Standalone versus PC. A Quest headset is a mobile chipset. Art that runs fine on a PC connected headset often needs rebuilding for standalone: fewer draw calls, baked lighting, aggressive LODs. Deciding this late is one of the most expensive changes you can make.
3. Multiplayer. This is the big one. Shared state, networked physics, voice, session handling and the testing that goes with it can easily double a project. Single-user VR is a well-trodden path; synchronised multi-user VR is a different discipline.
Things that move the number far less than people expect: the number of interactions, UI polish, and platform count within the same family.
If someone quotes you a VR project without asking about those three, the quote is a guess.
Happy to sanity-check a scope in this thread. Say what you want to build, on what hardware, for how many simultaneous users, and we will tell you which of the three is about to hurt.