Getting Started with Unity and Firebase
The metaverse and the future are a combination of increasingly united concepts, a new formula that was born to stay and lay the foundations for new forms of communication in the coming years. A metaverse is a shared, three-dimensional virtual world where people can interact with each other and with digital objects in real time. Its utility lies in providing an expansive space for creativity, collaboration, and entertainment.
It allows users to explore immersive virtual environments, engage in social, commercial, and educational activities, and experience new forms of expression and experiences. In addition, the metaverse can serve as a platform for developing innovative solutions in a variety of areas, such as remote work, distance learning, product design, and simulation, offering endless possibilities for human interaction and imagination.
In the coming years, the way we attend work meetings, concerts, training courses, and even dating to find a partner may occur in the metaverse. This book will help you get started with programming a metaverse by using the Unity 3D video game engine, the Google Firebase suite, and other amazing tools.
In this first chapter, you will learn the first steps of configuring your computer so that you can start developing virtual worlds in Unity 3D. We will start by laying down the basics about the Unity 3D video game engine, introducing the services offered by Firebase and explaining how they will help us in our project, and covering what other tools we will need.
Once we have reviewed all the concepts and technologies we will use, we will install Unity 3D on our computers. This chapter’s mission is to ensure we completely configure our work environment for satisfactory project development.
We will cover the following topics:
- Installing Unity
- Organizing your project assets
- Choosing an input handler
- Understanding Firebase services
Note for advanced readers
If you have previously worked with Unity, you will know how to install it correctly on your system. If you already have it installed, you can skip the following steps – just keep the version of Unity that we will use as a base in this project in mind to avoid incompatibilities in future chapters.
