Book Image

Unreal Engine 4 Virtual Reality Projects

By : Kevin Mack, Robert Ruud
Book Image

Unreal Engine 4 Virtual Reality Projects

By: Kevin Mack, Robert Ruud

Overview of this book

Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) is a powerful tool for developing VR games and applications. With its visual scripting language, Blueprint, and built-in support for all major VR headsets, it's a perfect tool for designers, artists, and engineers to realize their visions in VR. This book will guide you step-by-step through a series of projects that teach essential concepts and techniques for VR development in UE4. You will begin by learning how to think about (and design for) VR and then proceed to set up a development environment. A series of practical projects follows, taking you through essential VR concepts. Through these exercises, you'll learn how to set up UE4 projects that run effectively in VR, how to build player locomotion schemes, and how to use hand controllers to interact with the world. You'll then move on to create user interfaces in 3D space, use the editor's VR mode to build environments directly in VR, and profile/optimize worlds you've built. Finally, you'll explore more advanced topics, such as displaying stereo media in VR, networking in Unreal, and using plugins to extend the engine. Throughout, this book focuses on creating a deeper understanding of why the relevant tools and techniques work as they do, so you can use the techniques and concepts learned here as a springboard for further learning and exploration in VR.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Title Page
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
12
Where to Go from Here
Index

Using the VR editor


Unreal Engine comes equipped with a very capable virtual reality editor that allows you to build your scenes entirely from within the virtual environment. Nearly any editor operation you might need to perform can be done without leaving VR.

It may be tempting, though, to look at the VR Mode editor as a gimmick when you first encounter it. After all, what's wrong with the existing editor? Nothing, but here's the thing: virtual reality isn't a flat screen. Depth exists. Sightlines are different. Colors render differently. Developing for virtual reality by using a flat screen adds a layer of abstraction to your design process. You'll understand more and get better results by working directly in your target medium when you can.

In practice, you're likely to find both editing modes useful. Just as it's difficult to see what a scene is really going to look like in VR from the flat-screen editor view, it's difficult to achieve precision in placing objects in VR Mode. You'll discover...