Education Ecosystem Blog

Are you excited about the growth of Virtual Reality(VR) in the market? Witnessing so many games and platforms released in the past two years can make anyone excited. Nope, we are not only talking about consumers but developers as well who are aiming to get on the VR seat.

According to Wikipedia, “Virtual reality (VR) typically refers to computer technologies that use software to generate the realistic images, sounds and other sensations that replicate a real environment (or create an imaginary setting), and simulate a user’s physical presence in this environment.”

VR is not new. The idea of “VR” first came into existence in 1929 and in 1960, a VR headset became available. The name “Virtual Reality,” however was first coined in the year 1987. With such a rich history, VR only saw great improvement in the last decade or so.

Big companies such as Google, Sony, Microsoft, and Facebook are investing a huge amount of research and money into the technology. This has prompted developers to train in Virtual Reality. Even though VR has multiple usages, most of the growth is seen in the game industry, using VR. PlayStation VR is a perfect example as it provides excellent VR experience at a reasonable price. Another great example is the Facebook’s own Oculus Rift.

LiveEdu has also seen a fair share of VR developers share their projects. Why so? Not only do they get exposure, but they also open themselves to future opportunities by streaming their work. Peoht, cadow, dshankar, RyujinnJakka, BonzoApps are few of the amazing streamers who share their VR project with the community.

In this article, we will share ten tips to start with Virtual reality game development. These tips will help you pick VR faster than anyone else. Let’s get started.

Learn Unity

One of the easiest ways to get started with VR is to learn Unity game engine. We have already covered on how to get started with Unity game engine. The article offers a small introduction on how to get started. To learn more, you can dive deep into the Unity Learn Page that contains all the books, streams, and tools for Unity.

However, you must be asking why Unity is the preferred way of starting VR? Virtual Reality is a complex field with a high bar to entry. Unity, on the other hand, makes it easy for the beginner to get started. Unity tutorials are also a great place to get started. Slowly start with the tutorials and expand your Unity knowledge by learning more about the SDK. If you have no knowledge of how to code, Unity is the place to get started.

Learn C# and C++

Great. You decided to pick up Unity game engine. The next step is to learn C++ and C#. At the core, Unity is all about utilizing these programming languages to make the most out of it. Scripting plays an important role when working with your game, and the C# and C++ programming languages will enable you to tweak your game and explore the opportunity. You can get started with C# and C++ Learn pages.

Learn about the hardware

Now that you have a basic understanding of Unity and its core programming languages, it is now time to learn about the different VR hardware. The current market is full of options when it comes to hardware. Degrees of freedom is a key way to differentiate between different available hardware.

For example, you can start working with Google Cardboard, which offers 3 DOF. Other expensive hardware, such as Valve HTC Vive, Facebook Oculus Rift or Sony’s PlayStation VR, all offer 6 DOF.

6 DOF offers better control over your virtual environment than 3 DOF. You can read more about them in the Positional tracking introduction. Working with 3 DOF is a good way to experiment your way through VR. It should also be noted that with more DOF, you need a powerful machine with more computation power — which means investing in a costly setup.

So which hardware should you know about? They are listed below.

• Oculus Rift
• Google Cardboard
• HTC Vive
• Playstation VR

Choose an audience and platform

Wonderful! You now know a lot about VR and are ready to dive deep into VR development. However, before you get started, you need to choose an audience and a platform for VR game development. If you think that you can develop games across all the platforms at the same time, you are thinking wrong as there are differences when it comes to user experience, inputs, and other key capabilities.

You can check out peroht who is building a VR game in Unity 3D using C# and Blender.

Do Heavy Prototyping

With a solid base, you are now ready to get started with VR development. To reach your destination, you need to build a prototype and get it out for others to use. Once you get some valuable feedback, try to improve the prototype and improve it every single step.

User experience is important

VR development is all about building proper experiences for the end user. Above all, your product should offer excellent user interface, sound, game controls, etc. Without proper user experience, you won’t be able to achieve your VR app goal.

Study Successful VR games

The best way to learn is to learn from the best. There are many successful VR games that you can study. For example, you can study Minecraft VR, Arizona Sunshine, Superhot VR, etc. You can also go through the best VR article by TechRadar to know more about the top games.

Another way to study VR games is to use the search engine of LiveEdu.tv. You will easily find some amazing VR products being developed by VR developers. Subscribe and check their products out.

Take regular feedback while learning and during game development

Feedback is important when it comes to development, VR game development is no different. Regular feedback can help you improve on your mistakes and also understand the user needs faster. The feedback loop should start from the prototype phase to the final product release.

As a developer, you can also take advantage of livestreaming your VR development. Users can comment on your prototype whereas other VR developers can engage in your progress and help you.

Collaboration can help you be ahead of your learning curve

VR game development is a complex process. For proper VR game development, the design, development and testing teams need to collaborate closely.

Working on a VR project alone? Then, don’t forget to stream and engage with other VR developers on the platform.

Always keep updated with new VR changes

The world of VR is changing every single day with new updates and breakthroughs. As a VR game developer, you need to keep yourself up-to-date. For example, SDK(Software Development Kit) gets updated frequently. The new updates might contain new features that you can use in your new game or solves a bug that you have been encountering in your latest build! The best way to get those updates is to do email subscription to popular VR brands, blogs, and personalities.

Conclusion

That’s it! We have discussed the 10 tips that can help you get started with Virtual Reality game development. With so much promise, learning and developing a career in VR is a great choice.

So when are you getting started with your own VR game? Comment below and let us know!

P.S: Best way to get started is to stream your learning! Get LiveEdu Pro for added advantage now.