Before we begin building the solar system, we must setup our computer environment to build the runtime application for a given VR device. If you have never built a Unity application for Android or iOS, you will need to download and install the Software Development Kit (SDK) for your chosen platform. An SDK is a set of tools that will let you build an application for a specific software package, hardware platform, game console, or operating system. Installing the SDK may require additional tools or specific files to complete the process, and the requirements change from year to year, as operating systems and hardware platforms undergo updates and revisions.

To deal with this nightmare, Unity maintains an impressive set of platform-specific instructions to ease the setup process. Their list contains detailed instructions for the following platforms:

• Apple Mac
• Apple...

Like the Unity documentation website, Google also maintains an in-depth guide for the Google VR SDK for Unity set of tools and examples. This SDK provides the following features on the device:

• User head tracking
• Side-by-side stereo rendering
• Detection of user interactions (via trigger or controller)
• Automatic stereo configuration for a specific VR viewer
• Distortion correction
• Automatic gyro drift correction

These features are all contained in one easy-to-use package that will be imported into our Unity scene. Download the SDK from the following link, before moving on to the next step: http://developers.google.com/cardboard/unity/download.

At the time of writing, the current version of the Google VR SDK for Unity is version 1.110.1 and it is available via a GitHub repository. The previous link should take you to the latest version of the SDK. However, when...

Like all projects, we will begin by launching Unity and creating a new project. The first steps will create a project folder which contains several files and directories:

1. Launch the Unity application.
2. Choose the New option after the application splash screen loads.

3. Create a new project by launching the Unity application. Save the project as Trappist1 in a location of your choice, as demonstrated in Figure 2.2:

To prepare for VR, we will adjust the Build Settings and Player Settings windows.

4. Open Build Settings from File | Build Settings.
5. Select the Platform for your target device (iOS or Android).

6. Click the Switch Platform button to confirm the change. The Unity icon in the right-hand column of the platform panel indicates the currently selected build platform. By default, it will appear next to the Standalone...

Now that we have Unity configured to build for our device, we can begin building our space themes VR environment. We have designed this project to focus on building and deploying a VR experience. If you are moderately familiar with Unity, this project will be very simple. Again, this is by design. However, if you are relatively new, then the basic 3D primitives, a few textures, and a simple orbiting script will be a great way to expand your understanding of the development platform:

1. Create a new script by selecting Assets | Create | C# Script from the main menu. By default, the script will be titled NewBehaviourScript. Single click this item in the Project window and rename it OrbitController. Finally, we will keep the project organized by dragging OrbitController's icon to the Scripts folder.
2. Double-click the OrbitController script item to...

To experience this simulation in VR, we need to have our scene run on a head-mounted display as a stereoscopic display. The app needs to compile the proper viewing parameters, capture and process head tracking data, and correct for visual distortion. When you consider the number of VR devices we would have to account for, the task is nothing short of daunting.

Luckily, Google VR facilitates all of this in one easy-to-use plugin.

The process for building the mobile application will depend on the mobile platform you are targeting. If you have previously built and installed a Unity app on a mobile device, many of these steps will have already been completed, and a few will apply updates to your existing software.

Our goal for this book is to provide an experiential learning approach to development. We want to guide your learning, but we will also provide many opportunities to augment your learning with additional creative challenges and links to external sources to expand upon the projects described here.

In this chapter, we looked at the base Unity workflow for developing VR experiences. We provided a stationary solution so that we could focus on the development process. The Cardboard platform provides access to VR content from a mobile platform, but it also allows for touch and gaze controls, which we will explore in the next chapter. Our second activity, an interactive image gallery, will be built for the Samsung VR Gear, but it can also be built for the Google Cardboard platform.