Preface

Today, we are witnesses to the burgeoning of virtual reality (VR), an exciting new technology that promises to transform in a fundamental way how we interact with our information, friends, and the world at large.

What is consumer virtual reality? By wearing a head-mounted display (such as goggles), you can view stereoscopic 3D scenes. You can look around by moving your head and walk around by using hand controls or motion sensors. You can engage in a fully immersive experience. It's like you're really in some other virtual world.

This book takes a practical, project-based approach to teach you the specifics of virtual reality development with the Unity 3D game engine. We walk through a series of hands-on projects, step-by-step tutorials, and in-depth discussions using Unity 5 and other free or open source software. While VR technology is rapidly advancing, we'll try to capture the basic principles and techniques that you can use to make your VR games and applications immersive and comfortable.

You will learn how to use Unity to develop VR applications that can be experienced with devices such as the Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard. We'll cover technical considerations that are especially important and possibly unique to VR. By the end of this book, you will be equipped to develop rich, interactive virtual reality experiences using Unity.