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Mastering Oculus Rift Development
Mastering Oculus Rift Development

Mastering Oculus Rift Development: The next frontier of gaming and simulation

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Table of content icon View table of contents Preview book icon Preview Book

Mastering Oculus Rift Development

Chapter 1. Exploring a New Reality with the Oculus Rift

What made you feel like you were truly immersed in a game world for the first time? Was it graphics that looked impressively realistic, ambient noise that perfectly captured the environment and mood, or the way the game's mechanics just started to feel like a natural reflex? Game developers constantly strive to replicate scenarios that are as real and as emotionally impactful as possible, and they've never been as close as they are now with the advent of virtual reality (VR).

VR has been a niche market since the early 1950s, often failing to evoke a meaningful sense of presence that the concept hinges on---that is, until the first Oculus Rift prototype was designed in 2010 by Oculus founder Palmer Luckey. The Oculus Rift proved that modern rendering and display technology was reaching a point that immersive VR could be achieved, and that's when the new era of VR development began.

Today, VR development is as accessible as ever, comprehensively supported in the most popular off-the-shelf game development engines such as Unreal Engine and Unity3D. In this book, you'll learn all of the essentials that go into a complete VR experience, and master the techniques that will enable you to bring any idea you have into VR.

This chapter will cover everything you need to know to get started with VR, including the following points:

  • The concept of VR
  • The importance of intent in VR design
  • Common limitations of VR games
  • Vergence-accommodation conflict
  • The anatomy of a VR headset
  • Constellation tracking
  • The importance of input
  • Meeting required frame rates
  • Asynchronous Timewarp
  • Installing the Oculus runtime
  • Configuring your Oculus Rift
  • Stepping into Oculus home

The concept of VR

VR has taken many forms and formats since its inception, but this book will be focused on modern VR experienced with a Head-Mounted Display (HMD). HMDs such as the Oculus Rift are typically treated like an extra screen attached to your computer (more on that later), but with some extra components that enable it to capture its own orientation (and position, in some cases). This essentially amounts to a screen that sits on your head and knows how it moves, so it can mirror your head movements in the VR experience and enable you to look around the virtual world, making you feel like you're actually there:

The concept of VR

Depth perception

Depth perception is another big principle of VR. Because the display of the HMD is always positioned right in front of the user's eyes, the rendered image is typically split into two images, one per eye, with each individual image rendered from the position of that eye.

You can observe the difference between normal rendering and VR rendering in the following two images. This first image is how normal 3D video games are rendered to a computer screen, created based on the position and direction of a virtual camera in the game world:

Depth perception

This next image shows how VR scenes are rendered, using a different virtual camera for each eye to create a stereoscopic depth effect:

Depth perception

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Key benefits

  • Create immersive 3D games especially designed for the Oculus Rift platform
  • Build complex realistic virtual reality (VR) games with the Unity Engine
  • Create striking VR environments with advanced graphical techniques

Description

Virtual reality (VR) is changing the world of gaming and entertainment as we know it. VR headsets such as the Oculus Rift immerse players in a virtual world by tracking their head movements and simulating depth, giving them the feeling that they are actually present in the environment. We will first use the Oculus SDK in the book and will then move on to the widely popular Unity Engine, showing you how you can add that extra edge to your VR games using the power of Unity. In this book, you’ll learn how to take advantage of this new medium by designing around each of its unique features. This book will demonstrate the Unity 5 game engine, one of most widely-used engines for VR development, and will take you through a comprehensive project that covers everything necessary to create and publish a complete VR experience for the Oculus Rift. You will also be able to identify the common perils and pitfalls of VR development to ensure that your audience has the most comfortable experience possible. By the end of the book, you will be able to create an advanced VR game for the Oculus Rift, and you’ll have everything you need to bring your ideas into a new reality.

Who is this book for?

This book is for aspiring indie developers and VR enthusiasts who want to bring their ideas into virtual reality with a new platform that provides an unprecedented level of realism and immersion.

What you will learn

  • Increase immersion with 3D audio and intuitive interfaces
  • Create group VR experiences using multi-player networking
  • Design fun and engaging mechanics that utilize VR principles
  • Explore the best ways to navigate and interact using the Oculus Rift
  • Design intuitive ways to navigate and interact with scenes in VR
  • Add stunning realism to a scene with three-dimensional audio
  • Invent mechanics and features that take full advantage of VR hardware

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Feb 06, 2017
Length: 306 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781786461155
Vendor :
Facebook
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Product Details

Publication date : Feb 06, 2017
Length: 306 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781786461155
Vendor :
Facebook
Category :
Tools :

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Frequently bought together


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Table of Contents

10 Chapters
1. Exploring a New Reality with the Oculus Rift Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Stepping into Virtual Reality Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Improving Performance and Avoiding Discomfort Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Interacting with Virtual Worlds Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Establishing Presence Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Adding Depth and Intuition to a User Interface Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Hearing and Believing with 3D Audio Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Adding Tone and Realism with Graphics Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Bringing Players Together in VR Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. Publishing on the Oculus Store Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
(3 Ratings)
5 star 100%
4 star 0%
3 star 0%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%
D. de Céspedes Feb 24, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
As someone new to development for VR I found this book really easy to follow and helpful.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Arikia A Millikan Mar 13, 2024
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
This was the most helpful book of the many I read about the topic. Jack is a great writer!
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Isabelle G Dec 05, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Tres bon livre. Simple et efficace pour debuter programmation Oculus.Ne couvre pas oculus touch.Livraison et produit ok.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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