While the web was developed, the early HTML language has evolved dramatically. A good web page experience typically involves more than just HTML. One of those ways to add more interactivity is via JavaScript. The combination of HTML, XML, and JavaScript is a large portion of what delivers the web, including applications, such as Google Documents or online Microsoft Word (also free).

These are, however, flat. To move into the third dimension has traditionally taken high–speed software, usually written in C++. As computers have gotten faster and faster and Graphics Processing Units (GPU) have taken over the bulk of the actual 3D generation, languages to describe 3D games have evolved.

There are currently quite a number of ways to program in VR. It is challenging to generate 90 frames per second at the resolution the Rift and...

React VR is based on React, a framework that allows web pages and interactive User Interfaces to built by declaration instead of programming. You build views for each state in the application, and then React will use the correct components to display that application.

Declarative views make your code easier, more robust, and easier to modify and debug.

Components use the Object-Oriented concept of encapsulation, meaning they are self-sufficient and manage their own state. You then take these components and use them to make complex UIs.

React allows developers to create applications that change over time, without having to constantly refresh a browser page. It uses the Model-View-Controller design pattern/template and can be used in combination with other JavaScript libraries, such as Angular.JS.

React was first used with Facebook's newsfeed in 2011. It...

This section covers general 3D programming, but some discussion of different things is in order.

OpenGL is a standard for displaying graphics. Without getting into PC versus Workstation politics (ancient history now), it was a standard that a workstation vendor (SGI) pioneered to standardize computer graphics and the ability for programs to display graphics.

There are other APIs, such as DirectX, which was backed by Microsoft and many PC game developers, CAD software, and other PC computer graphics.

OpenGL is not, strictly speaking, open source; yet the software can be used without royalty payments and is documented and freely available (to be fair, so is DirectX).

Basically, OpenGL is a way for software to display graphics. Software, in this case, usually means C++ (or other languages that can call native libraries and O/S utilities...

Most desktop VR hardware currently available use Windows; because of this, the following instructions, and indeed most of this book will be a mixture of Windows installations and GearVR viewing. At the time of writing, Linux could be hacked to work with the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, but it's a difficult road and a bit beyond the scope of this book. Apple PCs are just adding the capability to add an external video card for VR, as most of them simply do not have the video processing capability to render VR at the resolutions used by the Vive and Rift headsets.

React is, however, not PC specific. You could build all of the examples in this book with Linux or a Mac, and follow alongside, and use a Google Daydream, Unofficial Cardboard, or Samsung Gear VR to view all of the samples. In this case, some of the examples may use slightly different...

In this chapter, we covered the basics of how to actually program VR worlds, and what software to use. We also went through installing the React VR system so that we could develop our own VR worlds! In the next chapter, we'll cover 3D basics and the math that we will need to build our VR worlds.

Don't worry about the math; there won't be a popup quiz.

Now to actually create an interesting world. But first, we need to understand what the world consists of. The next section will describe the React VR terminology to describe your virtual world.