Book Image

XR Development with Unity

By : Anna Braun, Raffael Rizzo
2 (1)
Book Image

XR Development with Unity

2 (1)
By: Anna Braun, Raffael Rizzo

Overview of this book

The drastic surge in the demand for XR development has led to an imminent need for comprehensive resources, learning material, and overall know-how in this area. This one-stop resource will ensure that professionals venturing into XR development can access all XR-related techniques to build appealing XR applications, without relying on Google every step of the way. This book is your guide to developing XR applications with Unity 2021.3 or later versions, helping you to create VR, AR, and MR experiences of increasing complexity. The chapters cover the entire XR application development process from setting up an interactive XR scene using the XR Interaction Toolkit or AR Foundation, adding physics, animations, continuous movement, teleportation, sound effects, and visual effects, to testing and deploying to VR headsets, simulators, smartphones, and tablets. Additionally, this XR book takes you on a journey from the basics of Unity and C# to advanced techniques such as building multiplayer applications and incorporating hand- and gaze-tracking capabilities. By the end of this book, you'll be fully equipped to create cutting-edge XR projects for engaging individual, academic, and industrial use cases that captivate your audience.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1 – Understanding the Basics of XR and Unity
4
Part 2 – Interactive XR Applications with Custom Logic, Animations, Physics, Sound, and Visual Effects
10
Part 3 – Advanced XR Techniques: Hand-Tracking, Gaze-Tracking, and Multiplayer Capabilities

How did Unity evolve as a platform for XR development?

Unity Technologies, now a billion-dollar titan in the realms of gaming and XR, emerged from humble origins in a cozy Copenhagen flat in 2004. The company’s journey to dominating the market with its Unity game engine has been equally fraught with uncertainty and turbulence, like that of XR technologies.

In 2002, a Danish graphics student sought aid on a digital forum, where a Berliner high schooler with backend experience joined him. Serendipity united their game studio dreams. With only a father’s financial cushion and café wages, they created their first game in 2005 – an alien, trapped in a life-support sphere, navigating Earth. Players tilted the world, and the alien rolled, gathering gems and evading CIA capture, utilizing wall-sticking and jumping tricks. The game’s difficulty overshadowed its cutting-edge lighting, and it found little success. Recognizing their talent for building tools...