Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should be fascinated (or at least intrigued?) by VR. Check out some articles that gave me inspiration: From product design to virtual reality by Jean-Marc Denis A month designing in VR by Julius Tarng Designing for virtual reality by ustwo After some investigation, turns out it’s actually not that hard to make a VR app, even if you don’t have any 3D or coding experience. Just to give you an example, here is . an app I made using this method Tools you need: A VR headset (I have , but others will work just fine.) Google Cardboard (Download and install the free version) Unity (Download from the section. I’m using Android as an example, but iOS should work as well.) Android SDK SDK Tools Only (Download from Github repo) Cardboard Unity SDK An (Download from Github repo) auto walk script made by Jupp Otto The app we’ll be making is a simple virtual environment tour. You can toggle auto walk using the trigger in your VR headset. Step 1: Create a virtual environment Open Unity. Create a project in the pop up window. No need to modify any settings at this point. I’ll be using this free asset created by , but you can use whatever asset you like. Open the URL, click “Open in Unity”. Unity will load it in the panel. Then click “Download” (Unity doesn’t allow downloading asset directly from the web page). Forest Environment Patryk Zatylny Asset Store After the download is finished, you’ll see a pop up. Click “Import”. Navigate to your panel (If you can’t find it, go to top menu bar, Window > Layouts > Default). Double-click the file in the file structure (use the slider in the lower right to change thumbnail size). Now you can see the beautiful view in the panel. Project demoScene_free Scene Step 2: Set up Cardboard Unity SDK In the panel, delete and Hierarchy First Person Controller Main Camera. Unzip the Cardboard SDK you downloaded from the , you get a folder. In the top menu bar, go to Asset > Import package > Custom package, choose in the folder. In the next pop up, click “Import”. Github repo cardboard-unity-master CardboardSDKForUnity cardboard-unity-master In your panel, you’ll see a folder. Go to the subfolder, drag and drop it in the . Project Cardboard Prefabs CardboardMain Scene Test it out by clicking on the play button. Use your mouse/trackpad and alt/control keys to simulate camera pan/tilt. When you are not in play mode, you can modify the initial position of using the section in the panel all the way on the right, or using the transform tools in the toolbar in the upper left. ( ) CardboardMain Transform Inspector More details on how to position things in Unity Step 3: Add an auto walk function Unzip the auto walk script you downloaded from the , you get a folder. Drag the file and drop it in the folder in the panel. Github repo Google-Cardboard-master Autowalk.cs Assets Project Click to select in the panel, click “Add component” in the panel all the way to the right, find and select it. CardboardMain Hierarchy Inspector Autowalk You’ll see a new section in the Inspector panel. Check “Walk When Triggered” and set the speed to 1 (or whatever you like). Now in play mode, you can use mouse click/trackpad tap to simulate the trigger to see autowalk in action! Autowalk Step 4: Package the app Go to top menu bar, File > Build settings. Select Android and click on “Player settings”. Enter a (up on the top) and a (in the section down on the bottom). In section, change to Landscape Left. Company Name Bundle Identifier Other Settings Resolution and Presentation Default Orientation Scroll down to . If you don’t have a keystore, check “Create New Keystore”, enter your password, and click “Browse Keystore”. In the pop up, enter a name for your keystore and click “Save”. Now you should see the file path of your keystore next to “Browse Keystore”. ( ) Publishing Settings More details on signing an Android app In the “Key” section below, in the Alias dropdown, select “Create a new key”. Enter your info in the pop up and click “Create Key”. Optionally you can add your app icon in the section. Click “Build” in the Build Settings window. During the process, you might get asked to select the root Android SDK folder. Unzip the file you downloaded and select that folder. You might also get asked to update SDK. Just confirm to update. After the build is finished, you can install the app on your Android phone, test it out with you VR headset, or even upload it to Google Play Store! (Sometimes when you rotate your head the camera doesn’t rotate with you. Exiting and reopening the app should fix it. It might have something to do with the SDK version & Android version. Let me know if you find out more details about this bug.) Icon Android SDK You are done! That wasn’t too hard, was it? Rambles Manage your expectations. It’s unlikely that you can build the next or on your first attempt. Start with something small and keep building on top of it. Lower your expectations, under-promise and over-deliver. Land’s End Google Cardboard Design Lab If we want VR to be successful, we need better tools, because have you seen the Unity interface? There needs to something like “Squarespace for VR” to lower the barrier and get more people involved.
