Book Image

Virtual Reality Blueprints

By : Charles Palmer, John Williamson
Book Image

Virtual Reality Blueprints

By: Charles Palmer, John Williamson

Overview of this book

Are you new to virtual reality? Do you want to create exciting interactive VR applications? There's no need to be daunted by the thought of creating interactive VR applications, it's much easier than you think with this hands-on, project-based guide that will take you through VR development essentials for desktop and mobile-based games and applications. Explore the three top platforms—Cardboard VR, Gear VR, and OculusVR —to design immersive experiences from scratch. You’ll start by understanding the science-fiction roots of virtual reality and then build your first VR experience using Cardboard VR. You'll then delve into user interactions in virtual space for the Google Cardboard then move on to creating a virtual gallery with Gear VR. Then you will learn all about virtual movements, state machines, and spawning while you shoot zombies in the Oculus Rift headset. Next, you'll construct a Carnival Midway, complete with two common games to entertain players. Along the way, you will explore the best practices for VR development, review game design tips, discuss methods for combating motion sickness and identify alternate uses for VR applications
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Platform setup

Before we begin building the solar system, we must setup our computer environment to build the runtime application for a given VR device. If you have never built a Unity application for Android or iOS, you will need to download and install the Software Development Kit (SDK) for your chosen platform. An SDK is a set of tools that will let you build an application for a specific software package, hardware platform, game console, or operating system. Installing the SDK may require additional tools or specific files to complete the process, and the requirements change from year to year, as operating systems and hardware platforms undergo updates and revisions.

To deal with this nightmare, Unity maintains an impressive set of platform-specific instructions to ease the setup process. Their list contains detailed instructions for the following platforms:

  • Apple Mac
  • Apple...