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

How virtual reality really works


So, with your headset on, you experienced the diorama! It appeared 3D, it felt 3D, and maybe you even had a sense of actually being there inside the synthetic scene. I suspect that this isn't the first time you've experienced VR, but now that we've done it together, let's take a few minutes to talk about how it works.

The strikingly obvious thing is, VR looks and feels really cool! But why?

Immersion and presence are the two words used to describe the quality of a VR experience. The Holy Grail is to increase both to the point where it seems so real, you forget you're in a virtual world. Immersion is the result of emulating the sensory inputs that your body receives (visual, auditory, motor, and so on). This can be explained technically. Presence is the visceral feeling that you get being transported there—a deep emotional or intuitive feeling. You can say that immersion is the science of VR, and presence is the art. And that, my friend, is cool.

A number of...