Computer Science, Virtual Reality Exercise Gaming
Sam "Shimi" Halperin
I'm an American computer scientist living outside of Philadelphia. My main interest is virtual reality exercise gaming. I work on movement games that make use of locomotion through virtual environments, virtual combat, and in-game holographic coaching.As a Jewish-American Xennial, I’ve always been drawn to emerging technology—I was part of one of the first generations to grow up fully networked. After more than a decade working with B-Corps and nonprofits in Philadelphia, I now work as an independent maker focused on open-source projects.
Opinion
This is me 'waffling' on a variety of disparate topics. All opinions are my own and do not reflect the perspective of employers or clients.
VR Demo: "You Don't Need A Treadmill" (UDNAT)
This PC-VR demo built for Meta Quest explores the playability of a walk-in-place game dynamic. We are interested in this from a number of exergame-specific angles including:
+ Efficacy of workout
+ Simulator sickness and aerobic load
+ Cognitive load in VR under increasing aerobic demands.We are also interested working with someone to run a study looking at variability in those outcomes in people who are VR Naive (new to VR), and non-VR Naive (Existing VR users with significant experience in games like Gorilla Tag, VR Chat, and Horizon).
Technical Exegesis
These are less traditional tutorial and more like dev logs of things I've picked up along the way. We used to have a whiteboard at school with the title "how did you do that", where people would share techniques. That's kind of what this is.
© All content copyright Samuel Halperin, 1999–2025.