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In this course, we're going to take an existing VR project and convert it from a seated VR experience into a room-scale experience. Room-scale VR is a term that describes virtual reality experiences in which you stand up and walk around within a small area that's about the size of a room.
System Requirements
In order to follow along with this course, you'll need the following:
- HTC Vive - This course will teach how to set up Unity with the HTC Vive. The Oculus Rift with Touch controllers may also work with some modifications.
- Windows PC - At the time of this writing (October 2016) there are no major VR headsets that support macOS.
- NVidia GTX 970 (equivalent or better) - The VR headsets in this course require a desktop graphics card that's better than or equivalent to the GTX 970. Less powerful graphics cards might work, but you may experience degraded performance.
Resources
- Room-Scale VR - Project Files - This is a zip file that contains the Unity project for this course. Download the file, unzip it, and then open the project in Unity.
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[MUSIC]
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Hi, I'm Nick.
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Virtual reality is an amazing way to experience media and entertainment because
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it tricks your senses into believing your present in another time, place or reality.
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There are many elements that contribute to this feeling of presence.
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Viewer wraps around your entire field of view.
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It allows you to look in 360 degrees and
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positional audio allows you to locate the sources of sounds.
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However there's multi presence than just visuals and sound.
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Room scale VR is a term that describes virtual reality experiences, in which you
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stand up and walk around within a small area that's about the size of a room.
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This area is typically called a tracking volume.
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Because it's a chunk of 3D space.
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A volume where your headset can move freely within the virtual world or
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can be tracked.
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The term room scale VR also sometimes encompasses motion controllers.
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Although they can also be used with seated experiences or omitted completely.
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Motion controllers allow you to use your hands in VR to interact with
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objects in a way that's analogous to how you might interact in the real world.
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For example in a traditional video game, you might click the mouse or
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press a button to perform an action such as throwing a basketball.
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When using motion controllers you would instead walk up to the ball and
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reach out with your controller and hold down a button to pick it up.
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This is sometimes called hand presence because
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the ability to use your hands in VR just as you do in the real world
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can contribute to the feeling of being present in a different reality.
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In this course, we're going to take an existing VR project and
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convert it from a seated VR experience into a room scale experience.
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You'll need a few things to follow along.
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First, you'll need a VR headset that supports room scale VR.
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You'll also need hand controllers.
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In this course we're going to work with the HTC Vive headset.
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But with some modification you should also be able to use the Oculus Rift
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in combination with the Oculus touch controllers.
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Second, You'll need a Windows PC preferably running Windows 10 or later.
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Right now there are no popular VR headsets for
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desktop computers that support Mac OS X.
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Finally, you'll need a graphics card better than or
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equivalent to the Nvidia GTX 970.
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It's possible that older and
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less powerful GPUs will work but you may experience degraded performance.
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Now let's take a look at the project.
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