Jonathan Linowes - Unity 2020 Virtual Reality Projects - Third Edition

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First published: September 2015
Second edition: May 2018
Third edition: July 2020

Production reference: 1290720

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This book is dedicated to Lisamy wife, best friend, and soul mateand the amazing family
we created together: Rayna, Jarrett, Steven, and Shira, who know in their hearts that
the future is theirs to embrace.

- Jonathan Linowes

Packt.com

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Jonathan Linowes is a long-time Unity developer and software engineer with a focus on VR and AR games and applications. He founded Parkerhill XR Studio and Reality Labs, an immersive indie studio and developer of products including the BridgeXR toolkit, the Power Solitaire VR game, and the Epoch Resources mobile game. He is a VR/AR evangelist, Unity developer, entrepreneur, and Certified Unity Instructor. Jonathan has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University, a Master of Science degree from the MIT Media Lab, and has held technical leadership positions at Autodesk and other companies. He has authored several books on VR and AR from Packt Publishing.

Yash Gugale completed his Master's degree from the Department of Computer Graphics Technology at Purdue University where he specialized in VR, AR (Unity 3D), graphics programming (OpenGL and shaders), and data visualization (D3.js). He has a strong background in machine learning (Sklearn), deep learning (PyTorch), mobile (Android) and web development, photogrammetry (Meshroom), animation (Maya), UI/UX, and 360-degree videos. His work also involves volumetric videos and applying shader effects in Unity to create amazing volumetric experiences. He is currently working as a software engineer at Samsung to build TV applications and in their XR Volumetric Studios. In his free time, he enjoys salsa dancing, hiking, traveling, yoga, and scuba diving.

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Today, we are witnessing the burgeoning of virtual reality (VR), which is exciting new technology and a creative medium that promises to transform how we interact with our information, friends, and the world at large in a fundamental way.

Through wearing a VR head-mounted display (HMD), you can view stereoscopic three-dimensional scenes. You can look around by moving your head, walk around the space with room-scale tracking, and interact with virtual objects with positional hand controllers. With VR, you can engage in fully immersive experiences. It's like you're really in some other virtual world.

This book takes a practical, project-based approach to teach you the specifics of VR development using the Unity 3D game engine. We will walk through a series of hands-on projects, step-by-step tutorials, and in-depth discussions using Unity 2019.4 LTS or Unity 2020.x, and other free or open source software. While VR technology is rapidly advancing, we'll try to capture the basic principles and techniques that you can use to make your own VR games and applications immersive and comfortable.

You will learn how to use Unity to develop VR applications that can be experienced on devices such as Oculus Rift, Quest, HTC VIVE, and others. We'll also cover the technical considerations that are especially important and possibly unique to VR. By the end of this book, you will be equipped to develop rich and interactive VR experiences.

About the author and this third edition

Years ago, I studied 3D computer graphics in college and user interface design in graduate school, before starting a small software company developing a 3D graphics engine for managing AutoCAD engineering drawings. We sold the business to Autodesk. In the ensuing years, I focused on 2D web app development, blogged about my technical adventures, and pursued several new start-ups. Then, in March 2014, I read about Facebook purchasing Oculus for $2 billion; that certainly piqued my interest. I immediately ordered my first VR headset, the Oculus DK2 developer kit, and began developing small VR projects in Unity.