Book Image

Complete Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Development with Unity

By : Jesse Glover, Jonathan Linowes
Book Image

Complete Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Development with Unity

By: Jesse Glover, Jonathan Linowes

Overview of this book

Unity is the leading platform to develop mixed reality experiences because it provides a great pipeline for working with 3D assets. Using a practical and project-based approach, this Learning Path educates you about the specifics of AR and VR development using Unity 2018 and Unity 3D. You’ll learn to integrate, animate, and overlay 3D objects on your camera feed, before moving on to implement sensor-based AR applications. You’ll explore various concepts by creating an AR application using Vuforia for both macOS and Windows for Android and iOS devices. Next, you’ll learn how to develop VR applications that can be experienced with devices, such as Oculus and Vive. You’ll also explore various tools for VR development: gaze-based versus hand controller input, world space UI canvases, locomotion and teleportation, timeline animation, and multiplayer networking. You’ll learn the Unity 3D game engine via the interactive Unity Editor and C# programming. By the end of this Learning Path, you’ll be fully equipped to develop rich, interactive mixed reality experiences using Unity. This Learning Path includes content from the following Packt products: • Unity Virtual Reality Projects - Second Edition by Jonathan Linowes • Unity 2018 Augmented Reality Projects by Jesse Glover
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

Available AR packages 


Unity3D has several options readily available via plugins for creating AR applications and games:

  • Vuforia AR Starter Kit
  • ARCore (Tango)
  • ARToolKit
  • ARKit

 It should be noted that Vuforia Starter Kit has been fully integrated into Unity3D and is quite easy to jump right into creating projects with. ARKit and ARCore, however, are slightly different. Because they are still in the experimental and early developmental phases, Apple and Google have not released full and proper SDKs for Unity Technologies to incorporate into the engine.

There is a plugin that exists for both of them that you will have to compile to get it to work with your project for Apple and Android devices, and we will go into how to compile and integrate into Unity3D to get it to work appropriately later in this chapter. For now, it is good to know that there is a little bit more setup involved with getting AR to work with iOS and Android.

With the introduction out of the way, we can finally begin to really talk...