Projects |
Holos
Built hand interaction, multiplayer networking, and 3D content workflows for Holos’s AR and VR training platform from 2019 to 2022.
Holos is an immersive training company in Madison, Wisconsin. I worked there from February 2019 to May 2022 as the product grew from individual XR demos into a training platform that customers could reuse. The current product has changed since then and now focuses on capturing expert work and turning it into spatial training.
Problem
Technical training often depends on details that are hard to write down. An instructor may point to one spot on a component, change the order of two steps, or demonstrate a motion that makes the procedure safer. Manuals and slides lose much of that. Custom VR training could capture it, but it usually took a long production cycle and outside developers.
Holos wanted instructors and subject-matter experts to stay close to the authoring process. Reliable shared sessions and predictable hand input were basic requirements. New customer models also needed a path into training scenes that did not require engineering help every time.
What I built (2019 to 2022)
- Built the shared simulation layer and multiplayer networking for instructor and trainee sessions. Virtual objects stayed synchronized across connected headsets.
- Developed hand tracking and gesture recognition for grabbing, placing, rotating, and operating training objects.
- Added physics and object constraints so props behaved consistently when users assembled or handed them off.
- Worked on import tools that cleaned up customer models for scale, pivots, colliders, and interaction.
- Connected the authoring workflow to the simulation runtime so the team could revise and deploy training content without building a new app for every scenario.
Product and design work
My role covered prototype design, implementation, user testing, and release work. Testing with instructors and trainees often exposed problems that looked fine in a headset demo.
- Prototyped new training interactions, tested them, and shipped the versions that people understood.
- Used test sessions to simplify controls, adjust gesture thresholds, and improve object handling.
- Traced failures across input, networking, assets, and UX instead of treating each symptom as an isolated bug.
- Worked with engineering, design, leadership, and customer teams to meet product and partner deadlines.
Engineering decisions
Imported models were part of the product, not an afterthought. We checked collision, origins, scale, and interaction metadata before a model reached a training scene. Shared manipulation needed clear ownership rules so two users could not fight over the same object. Hand tracking also needed obvious feedback and recoverable mistakes; a clever gesture was useless if trainees could not repeat it. Because procedures change, instructors needed a short path from an edit to a tested release.
Impact
- Helped turn a set of XR prototypes into a reusable platform for networked training.
- Shipped interaction, physics, networking, and asset pipeline features for enterprise and government customers.
- Worked with leadership on the product and technical work that helped Holos secure a $750K U.S. Air Force contract and join Techstars.
Holos changed how I thought about XR. The headset gets the attention, but asset cleanup, network state, input reliability, and release speed decide whether a training tool survives outside a demo. Subject-matter experts should be able to teach with the software without learning to build software themselves.
