Before cell phones, you would call someone and it would make no sense to say, "Hey, where are you?" You know where they are, you called their house, that's where they are.
So then cell phones come around and you start to hear people say, "Hello. Oh, I'm at Starbucks," because the person on the other end wouldn't necessarily know where you are because you became un-tethered from your house for voice communications.
So when I saw a VR demo, I had this vision of coming home and my wife has got the kids settled down, she has a couple minutes to herself, and she's on the couch wearing goggles on her face. I come over and tap her on the shoulder, and I'm like, "Hey, where are you?"
It's super weird. The person's sitting right in front of you, but you don't know where they are.
- Jonathan Stark, mobile expert, and podcaster
Welcome to virtual reality (VR)! In this book, we will explore what it takes to create VR experiences on our own. We will take a walk through a series of hands-on projects, step-by-step tutorials, and in-depth discussions using the Unity 3D game engine and other free or open source resources. Though VR technology is rapidly advancing, we'll try to capture the basic principles and techniques that you can use to make your VR games and applications feel immersive and comfortable.
In this first chapter, we will define VR and illustrate how it can be applied not only to games, but also to many other areas of interest and work productivity. We'll see that VR is all about immersion and presence, seemingly transporting you to a different place and experience. VR is not just for gaming—it can be applied to a wide spectrum of personal, professional, and educational applications. This chapter discusses the following topics:
- What is virtual reality?
- Differences between virtual realityand augmented reality
- How VR applications may differ from VR games
- Types of VR experience
- Types of VR device
- Some psychological, physiological, and technical explanations of how VR works
- Technical skills that are necessary for the development of VR