Book Image

Unreal Engine Virtual Reality Quick Start Guide

By : Jessica Plowman
Book Image

Unreal Engine Virtual Reality Quick Start Guide

By: Jessica Plowman

Overview of this book

With the ability to put players directly in the game, virtual reality gives users the chance to experience digital worlds directly. Nevertheless, many designers are unsure where to start when working with this amazing technology. With this book, you will learn user experience design processes and create immersive gameplay experiences designed for entertainment and player comfort. Using the power of Unreal Engine 4’s Blueprint visual scripting language, you will build player interaction and locomotion systems from scratch and use these flexible systems to create a sample game, as well as develop functional 2D and 3D user interfaces for players to interact with. And also learn the best practices for creating game art for virtual reality. Finally, you will learn how to test your application with your target audience and finalize your game for distribution. By the end of this book, you will have the knowledge to be able to make the leap from traditional game development to creating immersive virtual reality experiences using Unreal Engine 4.
Table of Contents (8 chapters)

What does VR bring to video games?

VR is the new frontier in games and entertainment. It's able to put the player in the shoes of their favorite heroes, or in a front-row seat for some of their favorite experiences. In most experiences, player movement is translated into near one-to-one movement inside the game—something that's usually impossible in traditional video games. VR also has the power to immerse our player in an alternate world and make them truly feel as if they're there. It's these special abilities that mark VR as the future of gaming.

It's important to understand that the input and controls in VR can go beyond the locomotion methods that we discussed in the last chapter. Each controller for the Vive or Oculus brings at least six different buttons that can be mapped to different functions within a game. Each of these can then be...