Book Image

Virtual Reality Blueprints

By : Charles Palmer, John Williamson
Book Image

Virtual Reality Blueprints

By: Charles Palmer, John Williamson

Overview of this book

Are you new to virtual reality? Do you want to create exciting interactive VR applications? There's no need to be daunted by the thought of creating interactive VR applications, it's much easier than you think with this hands-on, project-based guide that will take you through VR development essentials for desktop and mobile-based games and applications. Explore the three top platforms—Cardboard VR, Gear VR, and OculusVR —to design immersive experiences from scratch. You’ll start by understanding the science-fiction roots of virtual reality and then build your first VR experience using Cardboard VR. You'll then delve into user interactions in virtual space for the Google Cardboard then move on to creating a virtual gallery with Gear VR. Then you will learn all about virtual movements, state machines, and spawning while you shoot zombies in the Oculus Rift headset. Next, you'll construct a Carnival Midway, complete with two common games to entertain players. Along the way, you will explore the best practices for VR development, review game design tips, discuss methods for combating motion sickness and identify alternate uses for VR applications
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Facilitating user interaction

Unity provides various components for facilitating user input. These components are used first to identify if the user is looking at a specific GameObject, if the user has interacted with a touch device, and how a GameObject should respond to input from a touch device. Let's take a brief look at the components we need for this project.

Raycasters

When we created the first Canvas for the scene, Unity also added an item called EventSystem. An EventSystem is used to detect where current input events need to be sent and Raycasters provide that information. Think of a Raycaster as a visible laser pointer. When evoked in your scene, the Raycaster sends out a ray which reports the object or objects...