Book Image

Unity Virtual Reality Projects

By : Jonathan Linowes
Book Image

Unity Virtual Reality Projects

By: Jonathan Linowes

Overview of this book

What is consumer “virtual reality�? Wearing a head-mounted display you view stereoscopic 3D scenes. You can look around by moving your head, and walk around using hand controls or motion sensors. You are engaged in a fully immersive experience. On the other hand, Unity is a powerful game development engine that provides a rich set of features such as visual lighting, materials, physics, audio, special effects, and animation for creating 2D and 3D games. Unity 5 has become the leading platform for building virtual reality games, applications and experiences for this new generation of consumer VR devices. Using a practical and project-based approach, this book will educate you about the specifics of virtual reality development in Unity. You will learn how to use Unity to develop VR applications which can be experienced with devices such as the Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard. We will then learn how to engage with virtual worlds from a third person and first person character point of view. Furthermore, you will explore the technical considerations especially important and possibly unique to VR. The projects in the book will demonstrate how to build a variety of VR experiences. You will be diving into the Unity 3D game engine via the interactive Unity Editor as well as C-Sharp programming. By the end of the book, you will be equipped to develop rich, interactive virtual reality experiences using Unity. So, let's get to it!
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Unity Virtual Reality Projects
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
11
What's Next?
Index

360-degree media


The "360-degree" and "virtual reality" terms have been tossed around a lot lately, often in the same sentence. Consumers may be led to believe that it's all the same thing, it's all figured out, and it's all very easy to produce, when in fact, it is not so simple.

Generally, the "360-degree" term refers to the viewing of prerecorded photos or videos in a manner that allows you to rotate your view's direction to reveal content that was just outside your field of view.

Non-VR 360-degree media has become relatively common. For example, many real-estate listing sites provide panoramic walkthroughs with a web-based player that lets you interactively pan around to view the space. Similarly, YouTube supports the uploading and playback of 360-degree videos and provides a player with interactive controls to look around during the playback. Google Maps lets you upload 360-degree still photosphere images, much like their Street View tool, that you can create with an Android or iOS app...