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)

Building the application

To experience this simulation in VR, we need to have our scene run on a head-mounted display as a stereoscopic display. The app needs to compile the proper viewing parameters, capture and process head tracking data, and correct for visual distortion. When you consider the number of VR devices we would have to account for, the task is nothing short of daunting.

Luckily, Google VR facilitates all of this in one easy-to-use plugin.

The process for building the mobile application will depend on the mobile platform you are targeting. If you have previously built and installed a Unity app on a mobile device, many of these steps will have already been completed, and a few will apply updates to your existing software.

Note: Unity is a fantastic software platform with a rich community and an attentive development staff. During the writing of this book, we tackled...