Virtual reality locomotion choice in games is not an option

Locomotion is one of the biggest issues in virtual reality: lots of alternatives with pros and cons for each choice have been provided, like:

• no locomotion (like in GearVR): just stay in a fixed place and don’t move, like when you look 360° videos;
• standard locomotion: you use keyboard or gamepad to move forward… very easy to understand but leads to motion sickness;
• teleportation (introduced by Vive): you just move immediately from one place to another. There’s no sickness, but it’s absolutely not natural;
• walk-in-place (like the one used in our full body VR solution ImmotionRoom): you move forward looking at the direction you want to move to and then walking in place in the real world to walk in the virtual world. This is smart since reduces a lot motion sickness, while being natural;
• Freedom locomotion system: like walk-in-place, but you define where to go using your thumb on the VR controller.
• Lots of others: really there are a bazillion locomotion options out there! Every day some new mechanics get invented

Moving with teleportation with Vive inside The Lab

Unity VR Editor review

There’s been a lot of hype about game engines with VR editors in the last months. The first one has been Unreal Engine, showcasing a solution for HTC Vive (because at that time it was the only headset with proper VR controllers) and then of course Unity decided to do something similar, announcing a VR editor with Vive and then Oculus support. With “VR editor” I mean the editor of the game engine that instead of running on your flat screen with you interacting with mouse and keyboard, runs on your VR headset in 3D, with you interacting with objects with your VR controllers.

HoloLens scene initialization

Yesterday I started collaborating in a little project that uses HoloLens (with Andrea… do you remember the guy of presence vs immersion article?) and as every normal guy working with this new device, I started looking at Microsoft Academy videos and articles.

First thing I discovered is that HoloLens requires you to change lots of settings in scene and in build parameters and this is soooooo boring. So I’ve said to myself “why can’t I write an editor script and do all this stuff automatically? I’ve already made something similar for our multi-build setup of ImmotionRoom, so it is something that I know how to do in few minutes”. Two hours of scripting later I discovered that maybe I over-estimated my capabilities (and the documentation of Unity Editor classes). And, even worse, I discovered that this feature is already present in that swiss knife that lies under the name of HoloToolKit (if you develop for HoloLens in Unity and you don’t use the HoloToolKit, you’re just a fool) 😀

Total facepalm (image by knowyourmeme.com)

How to change Virtual Reality SDKs list in Unity Build settings (via script)

Just a quick article to help people that are desperate like I was yesterday. Yesterday I was implementing the develop-once-build-everywhere facility of our ImmotionRoom system: it’s a very nice menu where you can choose the headset you’re developing for and then it sets for you all settings, prefab and stuff so that you can build your program for every headset you want without changing a single line of code or modifiying your scene. Cool, isn’t it?

The amazing multi-build menu now available on ImmotionRoom SDK: this way developing full body games for all platforms have become super easy… you just need to click on a menu entry!

Well, I was getting crazy because I was developing some editor scripts to implement it and then I didn’t manage to find how to change via script that damn Virtual Reality SDKs list that you can see in your Player Settings. Changing the Virtual reality Supported flag is super-easy and documented, but I could not find a way to change the other thing and in PlayerSettings class I couldn’t manage to find a solution.

Virtual reality games: The Affected (+how to make it work with Oculus CV1)

The Affected is one of my favourite virtual reality games of all times. At the moment it’s just a small demo that was made for Oculus DK2 (so lots of time ago), but it’s really awesome. The developers say that they’re developing a version for Oculus CV1 and other episodes, but I’ve never found them anywhere. But I hope that’s true, because I’m really eager to try a new version of this game!

The Affected is a horror virtual reality game, divided in 3 small episodes: The Manor, The Hospital and the Carnival. Every episode is scary as hell, so this is not a game for the faint of heart!

The Oculus Unity Pro Trial: should you take it?

Some days ago I opened my email and received a mail by Oculus saying that:

Since you’re one of our Rift pre-order pioneers, you get a free trial of Unity Pro! Your unique access code is available now, but expires December 31, 2016.

I was one of the one pre-ordering the Oculus Rift CV1 in January and living all the shipping mess (Pepperidge Farm Remembers!). So, now, Oculus rewards me with a free trial of Unity Pro! Cool! I’m a Unity Developer… this trial interests me a lot. But I’m not going to activate it.

How can you begin developing for virtual reality?

Continuing my serie on the most asked questions on reddit (I already answered about if you have to buy a VR headset and which one you should buy), today I’ll talk about what do you need to know to start developing some games in virtual reality.

So, how can you begin developing for virtual reality? What do you need to know?

I’ll just tell you a little secret: developing for virtual reality requires almost exactly the same skills of any other 3D games development. But keep this secret for yourself: it is so cool when you impress people saying them that you’re a virtual reality developer and girls just go crazy for it because they think that you’re some kind of futurist superhero, like Johnny Mnemonic.

Thanks for joining us on Twitch!

Today we made our first serious streaming on Twitch of the demo game that we of ImmotionAR are developing with my friends Max and Viktor of NTW. The game has to exploit the full body tracking capabilities of the ImmotionRoom system and has one simple rule: “catch the f.ing cubes!”.

We had lots of fun playing it: we also made other people try it for their first time and they were really amazed! Wow, we’re happy that this game, even so simple, has had a so great feedback! At the end we also made a little interview where we explained what is our vision for full body of the user in virtual reality.

I want to personally thank you all people that helped us in making this broadcast (Max I love you) and all people that have followed us! If you lost it, don’t worry: you can still re-watch the broadcast on 3klan channel!

Let’s hang out on Twitch!

Tomorrow, 18th of August, at 3.00PM UTC time (5.00PM here in Italy) we’ll stream on Twitch on 3klan channel!

Join us, so you can see me and my fellow game developer Max Ariani of NTW making experiments with virtual reality games that exploit the full body tracking of the ImmotionRoom system. We’ve made a little prototype and we want to show it to you! This can be a great occasion to talk a bit about virtual reality, full body tracking, video game developments and have fun together! See you tomorrow!