The Past, Present, and Future of VR

This book is designed to serve as a hands-on introduction to virtual reality, commonly known as simply VR. The book includes a brief history of the technology, some definitions of popular terms, as well as best practices to stave off motion sickness and ensure your trackers are working perfectly.

In the following chapters, you will begin creating your very own virtual worlds which you can explore using your mobile device or Head Mounted Display (HMD). Unity 3D will be used for all projects. Unity is a flexible and powerful video game engine used to create some of your favorite video games, such as Hearthstone, Cities Skylines, Kerbal Space Program, Cuphead, Super Hot, and Monument Valley.

The Virtual Worlds you will be creating in Unity include:

• Image Gallery: A Virtual Art Gallery/Museum where you get to decide what hangs on the walls in this Samsung Gear VR project.
• Solar System: Ignore the rules of time and physics as you travel through a model of the solar system in Google Cardboard.
• Zombie Shooter: The only good zombie is a dead one—wait, an undead one? Anyway, you'll shoot them in the Oculus Rift.
• Carnival Games: The only thing missing from these realistic VR carnival games is the smell of fried pickles.

Additionally, you will cover Unity development topics, such as:

• System requirements
• Scripting in Unity
• User interaction in VR
• Building VR environments
• Equirectangular images
• Improving performance
• The Samsung Gear VR workflow process
• The Oculus Rift workflow process
• Combating VR sickness