Unity Advanced: Virtual Reality

Name: Unity Advanced: Virtual Reality
Author: Ken Geary

Create a virtual reality game in Unity for the Meta Quest 2 headset.

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Course: On-Demand

Hello, welcome to this lesson in Unity. In these lessons, you will learn about VR, or virtual reality, in Unity. We will be using the most popular current VR headset for these lessons, the Mate Quest 2. Because the Quest is an Android-based device, we need to install additional options into our main Unity install. Open Unity Hub, click Install, next to your current install, in this case 2022.3, click the gear icon, select Add Modules, check the Android Build Support, you should have three that are checked on, if not check the OpenJDK and check Android SDK. Click Continue, accept the agreement, click Install, it may take a while for these options to install. When complete, click back to Projects, then click New Project, scroll down to Templates and select 3D URP, download the template, when complete, select your project path, we will name this project VR, then create Project. When the Unity Editor opens, we will set the layout to default, we will create a new scene, while new scene, select Basic URP, we will save the scene as VR, let's dock the game panel underneath the scene panel, give ourselves some room, delete the main camera, we will be creating a VR camera in a little bit, we should just be left with a directional light, Unity has an XR Interaction Toolkit that will greatly assist in our setup, XR stands for Mixed Reality, open the Package Manager, make sure the top menu selection is set to Unity Registry, search XR, select the XR Interaction Toolkit, and click Install, you may be asked to restart, click Yes, Unity Editor will restart, if the Package Manager is still open, we want to install some starter assets, if not, open the Package Manager, again search XR, select the Toolkit again, open the Samples tab, under Starter Assets, click Import, next we are going to install a plugin, select the XR Plug-in Management, click Install, close the panel, open Project Settings, make sure XR Plug-in Management is selected, and we will set for both Android, to Oculus, and PC, to Oculus, close this panel, so that we have something to look at in VR, let's add a plane, we will name this ground, reset it in Inspector, open the Assets folder, create a Materials folder, open Materials folder, create a new Material, we will name this floor, we will just make this a dark blue, and we will drag this to the top of our ground, next we will add a cube just for reference, reset that to the center, now we will start adding some XR components, in hierarchy right click, select XR, which is a new menu, XR Origin, click Enter to save the name, we will open this XR Origin, and you can see there is a camera offset, and the main camera attaches child objects, in the Inspector you can see extra XR components automatically added to the camera, select XR Origin again, and the Inspector, under Tracking Origin mode, set it to Floor, power up your Oculus Quest 2, attach the headset to your PC using the USB-C cable, put the headset on temporarily and confirm the Guardian using your hand controller, and click Quest Link, this is the link to the PC, make sure USB cable is connected between the PC and the headset, click Launch, you take your headset off for a moment, in Unity, press Play, put the headset back on and look around, you should be able to look around, see our floor, and if you look straight down, you should see the cube as if you're standing on top of it, you may also see a red line shooting atwards, that'll be fixed later, that's actually representing our hand controllers which we need to set up, take the headset off, stop play, we need to add some components to help set up other parts of our VR control, for instance we did not see any hand controllers within VR, let's set up our hand controllers, in hierarchy, select camera offset, notice the child objects to the camera offset, we have our main camera, the tool could also set us up with a left controller and right controller, left controller if we look at the Inspector, already has an XR controller added to it, but there's a lot of options here to check on and off, this could take us a while to do, fortunately with the plugins downloaded, we can download a preset, that'll save us a lot of trouble, click the preset icon and we're going to select the left controller preset for the right controller, select the right controller preset, play, put on the headset and now you should see your controllers for each hand, I'm just using the right controller, stop play, now we have the foundations to start building interactions in VR, save the scene, in the next lesson we're going to learn about VR mechanics in Unity, thanks for watching!

Advanced Provider : Ken Geary 4 Lessons · 29m in English

Course Description

In these lessons you will learn how to create a virtual reality game. We will explore VR used in headsets such as the Meta Quest 2. By the end of these lessons, you will be able to create your own VR game.

You will learn how to configure your Unity Editor installation to add options for the Android SDK. You will also install XR packages included with Unity such as the XR Interaction Toolkit, toolkit samples and the XR plugin management components. You’ll learn how to add these components to your scene to create a camera that will interact with the Meta Quest VR headset and place the user inside a virtual world. We’ll show you how to map hand controller input controls to the application, allowing the virtual controllers to track the handheld controllers. Then you’ll map controller trigger actions to control actions such as picking up a virtual object, teleporting to areas in the scene, and performing a snap turn to virtually turn the user at predefined angles. You will also learn to create a 3D sphere launcher using standard shapes and materials, as well as a sphere prefab that will be instanced and “launched” from the cannon.

What You'll Learn

Configure your Unity Editor installation to add Android SDK options and install Unity XR packages including the XR Interaction Toolkit, toolkit samples, and XR plugin management components
Add XR components to your scene to create a camera that interacts with the Meta Quest VR headset and places the user inside a virtual world
Map hand controller input controls so virtual controllers track the handheld controllers
Map controller trigger actions to control actions such as picking up a virtual object, teleporting to areas in the scene, and performing a snap turn at predefined angles
Create a 3D sphere launcher using standard shapes and materials, plus a sphere prefab that is instanced and launched from the cannon
Code an object grab action and a sphere launch action for a VR space

Key Takeaways

The course teaches how to create a virtual reality game for headsets such as the Meta Quest 2 using Unity.
Building a VR project requires configuring the Unity Editor for the Android SDK and installing Unity XR packages like the XR Interaction Toolkit and XR plugin management.
VR interaction is built by adding components that link the scene camera to the Meta Quest headset and by mapping hand controller input to virtual controllers.
Trigger actions can be mapped to behaviors such as grabbing virtual objects, teleporting, and performing snap turns at predefined angles.
A sphere launcher is built from standard shapes and materials, using a sphere prefab that is instanced and launched from a cannon.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will I be able to do after completing this course?

By the end of these lessons you will be able to create your own VR game for headsets such as the Meta Quest 2 using Unity.

Which VR headset does this course focus on?

The course explores VR used in headsets such as the Meta Quest 2.

What Unity tools and packages does the course cover?

It covers configuring the Unity Editor for the Android SDK and installing Unity XR packages including the XR Interaction Toolkit, toolkit samples, and the XR plugin management components.

What interactions will I learn to build in VR?

You will learn to map hand controller input and trigger actions to perform actions such as picking up a virtual object, teleporting to areas in the scene, performing a snap turn at predefined angles, and launching a sphere from a cannon.

What lessons are included in this course?

The lessons are Setting up Meta Quest 2 for Unity, VR Mechanics, Creating a VR Game Part 1, and Creating a VR Game Part 2.