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)

Summary

In this chapter, we learned several of the known causes of performance issues in VR games related to static and skeletal meshes, materials, lighting, and visual effects. After discussing the causes, we explored several different solutions using some examples from the DJ simulation Tribe XR and Epic Games own the cinematic VR demo showdown. Lastly, we discussed methods for profiling our own game performance to determine whether our game is being limited by the CPU or GPU, and how we can use that data to adjust and optimize our application for maximum player comfort.

In the final chapter, we will discuss the importance of game testing in the user experience design process and how to collect that data to make further design decisions. We will also learn how to finalize our game through the cooking process and prepare it for distribution. Finally, we will discuss the importance...