Book Image

Unity 2020 Virtual Reality Projects - Third Edition

By : Jonathan Linowes
Book Image

Unity 2020 Virtual Reality Projects - Third Edition

By: Jonathan Linowes

Overview of this book

This third edition of the Unity Virtual Reality (VR) development guide is updated to cover the latest features of Unity 2019.4 or later versions - the leading platform for building VR games, applications, and immersive experiences for contemporary VR devices. Enhanced with more focus on growing components, such as Universal Render Pipeline (URP), extended reality (XR) plugins, the XR Interaction Toolkit package, and the latest VR devices, this edition will help you to get up to date with the current state of VR. With its practical and project-based approach, this book covers the specifics of virtual reality development in Unity. You'll learn how to build VR apps that can be experienced with modern devices from Oculus, VIVE, and others. This virtual reality book presents lighting and rendering strategies to help you build cutting-edge graphics, and explains URP and rendering concepts that will enable you to achieve realism for your apps. You'll build real-world VR experiences using world space user interface canvases, locomotion and teleportation, 360-degree media, and timeline animation, as well as learn about important VR development concepts, best practices, and performance optimization and user experience strategies. By the end of this Unity book, you'll be fully equipped to use Unity to develop rich, interactive virtual reality experiences.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Summary

In this chapter, we explored a variety of mechanics for moving the player within your virtual environments. We started by implementing a glide locomotion mechanic, using the thumbstick on the hand controller to drive through the scene. This included alternative ways to define what "moving forward" means, using the gaze direction, pointing with a hand controller, or rotating using the horizontal axis of the thumb controller. Then, we built a climbing wall using a hand-over-hand grab-and-pull mechanic. We even made the player fall to the ground if they let go!

We also learned about the XR Interaction Toolkit's Locomotion System that uses Locomotion Providers to implement various features. First, we added a Snap Turn Provider to turn the player in discrete angle increments with the thumbstick, and we learned to use the XRI API to integrate our own GlideLocomotion script with the Locomotion System. Next, we implemented teleportation using a Teleportation...