Friday, January 29, 2016

Class notes for 1/29/16 - oculus rift +leap motion + unity

Hi my name is Damon Loren Baker, I'm going to be a guest lecturer today on VR interfaces for unity development.

Our goal for today is to get the Oculus Rift DK2 head mounted display (HMD) connected to unity along with the leap motion 3d sensor system and create immersive interactive virtual reality experiences. Even though it has gotten drastically cheaper to do this sort of thing (HMDs now cost hundreds not tens of thousands of dollars) and you don't have to hand code interfaces for everything VR can still be a painful thing to get working.  But I'm here to help you sort that out. Below are some links to the information we will use in today's class to set up the equipment and get things going. If you get confused refer back to them and follow through each step in order carefully. Being a little obsessive about how you go about things pays off in the long run. The installation procedure is different for OS X than it is for Windows for the Rift so pay careful attention to which OS you are running and follow the appropriate directions. You will need to make free accounts for leap and oculus to download the drivers required.



Unity documentation on integration of the Oculus Rift.


https://developer.leapmotion.com/getting-started/unity

this is the intro tutorial for the leap motion and unity. It also includes some information about integrating the leap with the rift and some simple demos, so this ties the previous examples together into one


Unity VR documentation, useful to refer back to once you have the interfaces installed and working.

I'm assuming you already know Unity and have a current version of it installed on your computer. If you read this post before class you can start trying to install things or at least set up you developer accounts and download the files (which are large) to help move things forward in class.

I will get some demos running on a system to show off by passing around the rift while we are  getting everything set up to inspire you and so the whole class isn't just struggling with software installation. VR really has to be experienced to understand it, watching videos on a screen doesn't convey the level of immersion that even commodity devices like the Rift and Leap can provide.

 The big advantage of using unity is that once we get through this (painful) install process you can basically just build things and turn on VR and it will (mostly) just work. Integrating the leap requires some thought about the kinds of interaction you want but it is relatively straightforward.



BTW: I can follow this blog and if you have questions post them and I'll try to help if I can.

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