Roman Vlasov
Verified Expert in Engineering
AR and VR Developer
Bückeburg, Lower Saxony, Germany
Toptal member since December 8, 2020
Roman worked at Meta, has 15 years of experience in 3D and VR software development, and a Ph.D. in computer science. He has led and worked on projects of all sizes, from scoping requirements to launch, primarily focusing on VR/AR, games, 3D interactive applications, CAD, and computer vision. With expertise in various languages and platforms, like C++, Java, and C#, Roman has designed and developed cutting-edge products, including VR arcade games, facial recognition, and advanced medical imaging.
Portfolio
Experience
Availability
Preferred Environment
Linux, Windows, Eclipse IDE, Android Studio, Git, Visual Studio, Unity, Unreal Engine
The most amazing...
...thing I've done while working at Meta (Facebook) was helping game studios successfully develop and launch games on the Quest VR platform.
Work Experience
Senior Software Engineer
Freelance
- Played a key role in clients' projects, from scoping requirements to launch, and further developed existing products.
- Developed a VR demonstrator for the IIP-Ecosphere project that involves more than 50 organizations in Germany, including VW, Sennheiser, and universities. The demonstrator will be the face of the project and shown to visitors at exhibitions.
- Assembled a team and led the complete development of a highly optimized, real-time face detection and tracking and age/gender classification system for low-performance devices. This is now the very core technology for the client's business case.
- Collaborated with the client's cross-functional team on the integration of the face analysis system and guided the development of related analytics tools.
- Created a complete pipeline from collecting and annotating training data to creating machine learning models.
- Developed an Android app to easily create floor plans and compute various parameters such as floor area.
- Developed 3D and 2D computer games for clients from scratch.
Developer Relations Software Engineer
Meta
- Acted as a problem-solving expert engineer with excellent communication skills and developer empathy.
- Helped developers successfully create and launch games and apps on the Quest VR platform, including "Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord," "Vampire: The Masquerade - Justice," "Hellsweeper VR," and others.
- Conducted technical due diligence for prospective game titles and milestone reviews for existing titles. The results were used in big funding decisions.
- Provided personalized engineering support to developers of high-profile game titles.
- Analyzed and resolved performance issues for the titles, ensuring they met platform requirements. Proactively managed technical issues.
- Facilitated cross-functional and cross-team collaboration within Meta to identify and resolve issues. Ensured effective communication and coordination between teams to implement necessary fixes.
- Advocated for external developers within Meta. This involved keeping a pulse on internal teams' actions and steering them when practical/critical. Everything developer-facing went through our team.
- Created educational materials for developers so that they could excel on the Quest VR platform.
- Developed and shipped user- and creator-facing features for Horizon, the center of Meta's VR Metaverse.
Founder
MIVAR
- Designed and developed a walk-through VR escape room experience for VR arcades.
- Expanded customer relationships and found potential business clients.
- Developed an enhanced version of the VR experience where virtual and real environments are synchronized.
- Applied for and received state funding for the company.
- Collaborated with the concept designer and writer on the design and storyline of the VR experience.
- Completed the advisory track of the Y Combinator Startup School (Note: this is not the Y Combinator core program).
- Presented the company at the Gamescom International Game Conference and the VR Arcade Conference.
Senior Software Engineer
Adpack (IDA GmbH)
- Developed core software that targets and plays commercials based on the set of people currently looking at the screen and produces reports. It runs on hundreds of Adpack edge devices in places like shops, post offices, and airports.
- Designed and developed a new RESTful API framework for the Adpack edge devices.
- Wrote research proposals to secure state funding for R&D projects.
Lead Software Engineer | Research Associate
Nanyang Technological University
- Collected requirements, designed, and led the development of visualization frameworks for the bowl-shaped, 320-degrees Cave Automatic Virtual Environment with five active stereo projectors, allowing researchers to easily extend projects to the CAVE.
- Saved the institute $280,000 by replacing their 3rd-party visualization framework with the one I developed.
- Migrated the ongoing Unity VR projects to the Oculus Rift VR headset and to the glasses-free stereo display with eight views.
- Integrated tracking devices, including Leap Motion, Kinect 2, and marker-based motion capture, into the ongoing projects.
- Conducted user-study research with 16 people about the degree of virtual presence and cost-effectiveness for four displaying devices.
- Interviewed job candidates, performed administrative tasks, assisted during audits, and negotiated support contracts.
- Wrote research proposals and project reports, made presentations, and presented demos to VIPs such as government officials and visitors from big tech companies.
Software Engineer | Ph.D. Researcher
Leibniz University of Hannover, Institute of Man-Machine-Communication
- Designed and developed a VR system with haptic interaction, using 3D volumetric data. It was sponsored by DAAD, the German Academic Exchange Service.
- Visualized medical imaging data using volume rendering and added the "feeling" of virtual objects using force-feedback devices.
- Improved marching cubes and smoothing algorithms, resulting in more than 10x faster graphics rendering of deformations.
- Developed a flexible deformation framework that allowed the use of haptic rendering together with different deformation models and developed deformation models.
- Exhibited the system during CeBIT international computer expos in 2013 and 2015, published research papers, and appeared in a German newspaper.
- Served as a teaching assistant for a course on data structures and algorithms.
- Wrote a research proposal leading to the project being funded by the European Union.
- Supervised the work of undergraduate students and interviewed job applicants.
Software Engineer (Part-time)
SoftDev SPb
- Worked on TurboCAD, versions 16.0, 16.1, and 17, a powerful CAD system and AutoCAD's competitor.
- Designed and developed a mesh simplification tool. It's based on the QSlim algorithm and reduces the number of triangles to the specified number while maintaining the best "quality" of the model.
- Developed and improved 3D and 2D CAD-specific tools, including simple extrude, prism, sweep, revolve, Face2Face lofting, bisector, helix, construction lines, and twisted extrude; 3D-polylines clipper by a volume; and hidden line renderer.
- Designed and developed a layout tool that optimizes the layout of details on wooden sheets in order to save wood.
Junior Software Engineer (Part-time)
Driver-Inter, Ltd.
- Developed camera models, GUIs, editor's behavior, and other features for a golf simulator.
- Built Samsung MenuTool, an editor for easy and intuitive creation of menus for phones and games.
- Implemented surface flattening algorithms for mapping of a 3D surface to a 2D space.
Researcher (Internship)
St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University, Department of Theoretical Mechanics
- Created and implemented a computer model of the formation of molecules from atoms.
- Visualized the process of the formation of molecules in real time in both 2D and 3D.
- Presented the model at the Institute for Problems in Mechanical Engineering of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg.
Experience
VR Demonstrator for IIP-Ecosphere
The VR demonstrator will be the face of the project and shown to visitors at exhibitions. It represents the structure of the IIP-Sphere as a landscape with various groups of buildings, each associated with the project participant, and every participant has its own demo space inside their building.
VR Escape Room Experience for VR Arcades
The advanced version of the VR experience has rough replicas of virtual objects in reality, exactly in the same place where they are expected to be. As a result, the player can not only see but also literally touch the virtual objects. This greatly enhances the player's immersion experience.
Visualization Frameworks
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h5cdnrf7vt0gvma/CAVE.mp4?dl=0VR System with Haptic Interaction
https://www.tib.eu/de/suchen/id/TIBKAT:872208478The system was sponsored by a Siemens/DAAD Ph.D. scholarship. It was exhibited during CeBIT international computer exhibitions in 2013 and 2015 with more than 3,000 people visiting the stand, including politicians. It was also recognized in a German newspaper, written about in published research papers, and presented at international scientific conferences. Last but not least, the haptic interaction part of the MultiScaleHuman project was based on my work.
Face Analysis System
While leading the complete project, from scoping requirements to launch, I also created the complete pipeline, from collecting and annotating training data to creating machine learning models. The system is now the very core technology for the client's business case.
Mesh Simplification
Augmented Reality Meetup Group (AR Berlin)
https://www.meetup.com/AR-Berlin/Education
Ph.D. in Computer Science
Leibniz University of Hanover - Hanover, Germany
Master's Degree in Informatics and Applied Mathematics
Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University - Saint Petersburg, Russia
Bachelor's Degree in Informatics and Applied Mathematics
Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University - Saint Petersburg, Russia
Certifications
Alumni of Startup Accelerator
Entrepreneur First
Skills
Libraries/APIs
NDK, API Development, Java Native Access (JNA), OpenCV, C++, DirectX, OpenGL, Microsoft Development, Microsoft Development
Tools
Visual Studio Development, Git, Android, Eclipse IDE, Android NDK, MonoDevelop, Subversion (SVN), CVS, CAD, Jira, Mercurial, RenderDoc, Perfetto, GitHub, Make, Confluence, cURL Command Line Tool, CMake
Languages
C++, Java, C#, XML, JavaScript, Python, SQL, Fortran
Frameworks
Unity, Unity, Unity2D, OGRE, Microsoft Kinect, Unreal Engine, Unreal Engine, Blueprint, Virtual Reality
Paradigms
Human-computer Interaction (HCI), Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Agile Development, Requirements Analysis, Concurrent Programming, Kanban Project Management, Agile Development, Waterfall Project Management, Management, Mobile App Design, Unit Testing, High-performance Computing (HPC), Distributed Computing, REST
Platforms
Windows Development, Oculus, SteamVR, Software Design Patterns, Oculus Rift, Windows Mixed Reality (WMR), Android, Visual Studio Development, Linux, Docker
Storage
JSON, Database, NoSQL
Industry Expertise
Virtual Coaching
Other
Virtual Reality, Haptics, Haptic Feedback, CAD Development, Algorithms, Data Structures, Software Development, Software Engineering, Computer Science, Native UI, Requirements & Specifications, Technical Leadership, Project Leadership, Volume Rendering, Volumetric Data, Medical Imaging, Computational Geometry, Computational Complexity, 3D Math, Point Clouds, Research, Applied Mathematics, Competitive Programming, Human Machine Interface, R&D, Mesh Development, Developer Relations, Game Development, Unity, 3D, Mixed Reality (MR), Game Development, API Integration, Immersive Experiences, Complex Problem Solving, Game Development, Game Development, Mathematics, Simulations, 3D Visualization, Collision Detection, Mesh Operations, Game Development, Game Programming, Gameplay Development, Freelance Programming, Data Visualization, Code Review, Meta Quest, MMO, Unity Editor Scripting, Performance Optimization, Memory Profiling, Real-time Rendering Engines, Support Vector Machines (SVM), Augmented Reality, 3D Graphics Engines, 3D Graphics, Software Design, Computer Graphics, Team Leadership, Software Architecture, UX Development, Motion Tracking, Geometry, Linear Algebra, 2D Graphics, Java 3D, Visualization, Mechanics, Physics, StarTeam, Leap Motion, Startup Development, Community Development, Community Management, Facial Recognition, Research Proposals, Multithreading, Data Engineering, Software Development Management, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Profiling, Leadership, Due Diligence, Mobile Game Development, APIs, Game Development, Mobile App Design, Tablets & Smartphones, Blueprints Visual Scripting, Mesh Simplication, Unreal Engine 5, Game Production, Avatars, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Data Science, Startup Accelerators, Ray Casting, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Networking, Mathematical Analysis, Analytical Geometry, Tensor Analysis, Materials Science, Discrete Mathematics, Probability Theory, Statistics, Quantitative Calculus, Optimization, Queueing Theory, Ray Tracing, Digital Signal Processing, Signal Processing, UML Diagrams, Automata Theory, Shaders, Motion Capture, Network Programming, Requirements, Android, Business to Business (B2B), Business Development, UI Development, GUI Design, Meetups, Animation Development
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