Book Image

Mastering Oculus Rift Development

By : Jack Donovan
Book Image

Mastering Oculus Rift Development

By: Jack Donovan

Overview of this book

Virtual reality (VR) is changing the world of gaming and entertainment as we know it. VR headsets such as the Oculus Rift immerse players in a virtual world by tracking their head movements and simulating depth, giving them the feeling that they are actually present in the environment. We will first use the Oculus SDK in the book and will then move on to the widely popular Unity Engine, showing you how you can add that extra edge to your VR games using the power of Unity. In this book, you’ll learn how to take advantage of this new medium by designing around each of its unique features. This book will demonstrate the Unity 5 game engine, one of most widely-used engines for VR development, and will take you through a comprehensive project that covers everything necessary to create and publish a complete VR experience for the Oculus Rift. You will also be able to identify the common perils and pitfalls of VR development to ensure that your audience has the most comfortable experience possible. By the end of the book, you will be able to create an advanced VR game for the Oculus Rift, and you’ll have everything you need to bring your ideas into a new reality.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Mastering Oculus Rift Development
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Enabling interaction with gaze-based mechanics


If you've played a video game before (chances are high if you're reading this book), navigating with W, A, S, and D might seem familiar. It's a proven input method that has been a solid common denominator for many keyboard-operated games. However, VR enables us to implement input methods that haven't been possible before now, for instance, using your eyes.

One of the simplest ways that gaze is used in virtual reality experiences is to teleport or jump from point to point. This is sometimes seen as more ideal than the movement we implemented in the last section since any kind of smooth locomotion without a response from our inner ear can make us feel nauseated.

Gaze-based teleporting circumvents this issue by instantaneously moving the player to whatever point they were looking at when a key or button was pressed. Because there's no perceived inertia, there is no eye/ear disconnect; the player is stationary throughout the whole process.

Implementing...