Book Image

Unity Virtual Reality Projects - Second Edition

By : Jonathan Linowes
Book Image

Unity Virtual Reality Projects - Second Edition

By: Jonathan Linowes

Overview of this book

Unity has become the leading platform for building virtual reality games, applications, and experiences for this new generation of consumer VR devices. Unity Virtual Reality Projects walks you through a series of hands-on tutorials and in-depth discussions on using the Unity game engine to develop VR applications. With its practical and project-based approach, this book will get you up to speed with the specifics of VR development in Unity. You will learn how to use Unity to develop VR applications that can be experienced with devices such as Oculus, Daydream, and Vive. Among the many topics and projects, you will explore gaze-based versus hand-controller input, world space UI canvases, locomotion and teleportation, software design patterns, 360-degree media, timeline animation, and multiplayer networking. You will learn about the Unity 3D game engine via the interactive Unity Editor, and you will also learn about C# programming. By the end of the book, you will be fully equipped to develop rich, interactive VR experiences using Unity.

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Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Preface
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Get in touch
Free Chapter
1
Virtually Everything for Everyone
Virtually Everything for Everyone
What is virtual reality to you?
Types of head-mounted displays
The difference between virtual reality and augmented reality
Applications versus games
How virtual reality really works
Types of VR experiences
Technical skills that are important to VR
What this book covers
Summary
2
Content, Objects, and Scale
Content, Objects, and Scale
Getting started with Unity
Creating a simple diorama
Measurement tools
Using third-party content
Creating 3D content with Blender
Creating 3D content in VR
Editing Unity in VR with EditorXR
Summary
3
VR Build and Run
VR Build and Run
Unity VR Support and Toolkits
Enabling Virtual Reality for your platform
Building for SteamVR
Building for Oculus Rift
Building for Windows Immersive MR
Setting up for Android devices
Building for GearVR and Oculus Go
Building for Google VR
Setting up for iOS devices
Summary
4
Gaze-Based Control
Gaze-Based Control
Ethan, the walker
Go where I'm looking
If looks could kill
Short intro to Unity C# programming
Summary
5
Handy Interactables
Handy Interactables
Setting up the scene
Basic button input
Polling for clicks
Using scriptable objects for input
Using Unity events for input
Really using your hands
Interactable items
Summary
6
World Space UI
World Space UI
Studying VR design principles
A reusable default canvas
Visor HUD
The reticle cursor
The windshield HUD
The game element UI
Using TextMeshPro
Info bubble
An in-game dashboard with input events
Pointing and clicking with VR components
Building a wrist-based menu palette
Summary
7
Locomotion and Comfort
Locomotion and Comfort
Understanding Unity characters
Using glide locomotion
Adding comfort mode locomotion
Techniques for teleportation
Teleportation toolkits
Resetting center and position
Managing VR motion sickness
Summary
8
Playing with Physics and Fire
Playing with Physics and Fire
Unity physics
Bouncy balls
Managing game objects
Headshot game
Paddle ball game
Shooter ball game
Juicing the scene
Summary
9
Exploring Interactive Spaces
Exploring Interactive Spaces
Level design with Blender
Assembling the scene in Unity
Adding pictures to the gallery
Managing art info data
Displaying the art info
Moving around the gallery
Summary
10
Using All 360 Degrees
Using All 360 Degrees
360-degree media
Fun with photo globes
Rendering photospheres
Using Unity skyboxes
Capturing 360-degrees in Unity
Summary
11
Animation and VR Storytelling
Animation and VR Storytelling
Composing our story
Timelines and Audio tracks
Using a Timeline to activate objects
Recording an Animation Track
Using the Animation editor
Animating other properties
Using Animation clips
Using Animator Controllers
Making the story interactive
Summary
12
Social VR Metaverse
Social VR Metaverse
Multiplayer networking
Setting up a simple scene
Adding multiplayer networking
Adding a matchmaking lobby
Syncing objects and properties
Advanced networking topics
Options for voice chat
Using Oculus platform and avatars
Building and sharing custom VRChat rooms
Summary
13
Optimizing for Performance and Comfort
Optimizing for Performance and Comfort
Using the Unity Profiler and Stats
Optimizing your art
Optimizing your scene with static objects
Optimizing your code
Optimizing the rendering
Runtime performance and debugging
Summary
14
Other Books You May Enjoy
Other Books You May Enjoy
Leave a review - let other readers know what you think

Advanced networking topics

We have only touched the surface of what you can do with networking. If this interests you, I recommend you look closely at the Unity manual and go through their tutorials too. As we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, a good place to start is the Unity Networking Concepts document (http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UNetConcepts.html).

It's important to understand Peer-to-Peer versus Client-Server versus Dedicated Server networking architecture. As we've seen, by default Unity Networking is Client-Server, with a player as the host Server (the player is also its own Client). You also have the option of setting up with a dedicated server running Unity as a standalone player in headless mode.

Some other networking topics and issues include:

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