Jeff W. Murray - Building Virtual Reality with Unity and SteamVR

Building Virtual Reality with Unity and SteamVR

Second Edition

Jeff W. Murray

CRC Press

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To my boys: Never give up. Forget about the material and remember that if you do your best, you will always be a success to me. Also, be nice to the cat.

H aving people around me who believe in my abilities and work makes a massive difference. To every person who has ever supported me, either personally or professionally, I want to say a sincere thank you. You are amazing.

I would like to extend special thanks to the people who believed in my work and helped me with their support: Michael Zucconisenior public relations manager at HTC and thank you to the entire HTC Vive team. I love my HTC Vive with a passion, and I will always be an HTC Vive fan!

There are a lot of people who helped and supported my work and this book along the wayId like to extend thanks to everyone who helped including Brian Robbins, VR Martin, Chris Hanney, Technicat (for endless support and good vibes), Molegato, Mickael Laszlo, Juanita Leatham, CoolPowers, Dave Brake, Sigurdur Gunnarsson, Kevin Godoy R., Wim Wouters, IdeaFella, Liam Twose, RafaEnd, Lynxie, Alistair Murphy, Christer McFunkypants Kaitilla, Dani Moss, Vinh (the Actual Final Boss), Quantum Sheep, Scott Wilson, Huck Z (Overclocked), Paradise Decay, Kryten, Silverware Games, Pete Patterson, Mike White, Dr Oculus VR, Say Mistage, Andy Hatch, Sean MacPhedran, GermanRifter VR, Tony Walsh, Andreas BOLL Aronsson, Richard Bang, Cat, Darrel Plant, Cassie, Christopher Brown, Phil Nolan, Pixel Hat Studio, Vehicle Physics, Marcus Valles, Trev, Karyl, Hello Games (No Mans Sky in VR is a trip), Tami Quiring, Nadeem Rasool, Dwayne Dibley, Liz and Pete Smyth, Isaac and Aiden, Ethan and Will, David Helgason, James Gamble, Vasanth Mohan (FusedVR), Lister, Alexander Kondratskiy, Dan Hurd and Evan Reidland, The Oliver Twins, Jeevan Aurol, Rick King, Rami Ismail, Big Man, Aldis Sipolins, Ric Lumb, Craig Taylor, Rob Hewson, Dani Moss, Jayenkai (JNK), Pablo Rojo and Ryan Evans. I would also like to sincerely thank the codeMantra team and the whole team at CRC Press/AK Peters, including Jessica Vega and Rick Adams, for making this book a reality.

And to you, dear reader! Thank you for buying this book. I wish I could convey how awesome it is to know that someone else is reading this. The potential for VR continues to go beyond anything we have seen before; transcending format, convention, gender, and politics. The virtual world is open to new ideas and new ways of thinking and you, the creators, hold the key to writing the rule books and finding the magic in our new universes. It is already developing new perspectives and journeys for all of us, and I truly cannot wait to see what you create. I sincerely hope this book helps you to start your own virtual reality journey. Get in there, create new universes, and feel free to let me know when I can visit them!

Jeff W. Murray

Jeff W. Murray is the author of C# Game Programming Cookbook for Unity3D (2014) and Game Development for iOS with Unity3D (2012) also published by CRC Press. An original Oculus Rift backer, Jeff is a true VR fan. He has extensive experience including working with IBM Research on cutting-edge VR research projects. He also self-publishes VR games on Steam and Viveport. In his game development career spanning over 20years, Jeff has worked with some of the worlds largest companies (including Sony, BBDO, and Microsoft) as a Game Director, Developer, and Game Designer. He has worked with the Unity engine since its initial public release, on projects ranging from hit mobile games to medical simulations. Jeff has a passion for playing sim racing games and devouring Jaffa Cakes.

To get started in VR with this book, you will of course need a VR-ready PC and whatever cool hardware tech you want to plug into it. Along with your chosen VR devices, let us take a quick look at what else you will be needing:

• Example Unity Projects for this book: Download the example files that accompany this book from https://github.com/psychicparrot/BuildingVRWithUnityAndSteamVR.

• Unity (available from the Unity store at http://www.unity3d.com): Unity and the required Software Development Kits (SDKs) can be downloaded free of charge with no catches. Unity Personal boasts that it is a fully featured version of Unity with just a few caveats. You can do everything in this book with Unity Personal. If you are unsure as to whether or not you need a paid version of Unity, you can always try out the free Personal edition to get used to it and see how it all goes before you put any money into it.

• Steam client: The Steam client is a free download that gives you access to Valve Softwares library and a store full of games. Essentially, Steam is an application that allows you to download and buy things, but in the context of this book, Steam is the application that you use to download and run SteamVR with.