"With his YouTube channel, Mitch's VR Lab, Mitch has helped thousands of people understand the foundations of locomotion and interaction mechanics with clear and concise UE4 videos. I'm thrilled that he has taken the time to bring all his knowledge and experience in working with Unreal Engine and Virtual Reality to the Unreal® Engine VR Cookbook.... Mitch is uniquely qualified to share this book with the world."
-Luis Cataldi, Unreal Engine Education, Epic Games, Inc.
For game developers and visualization specialists, VR is the next amazing frontier to conquer-and Unreal Engine 4 is the ideal platform to conquer it with. Unreal ® Engine VR Cookbook is your complete, authoritative guide to building stunning experiences on any Unreal Engine 4-compatible VR hardware.
Renowned VR developer and instructor Mitch McCaffrey brings together best practices, common interaction paradigms, specific guidance on implementing these paradigms in Unreal Engine, and practical guidance on choosing the right approaches for your project. McCaffrey's tested "recipes" contain step-by-step instructions, while empowering you with concise explanations of the underlying theory and math.
Whether you're creating first-person shooters or relaxation simulators, the techniques McCaffrey explains help you get immediate results, as you gain "big picture" knowledge and master nuances that will help you succeed with any genre or project.
Understand basic VR concepts and terminology
Implement VR logic with Blueprint visual scripting
Create basic VR projects with Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Gear VR, Google VR, PSVR, and other environments
Recognize and manage differences between seated and standing VR experiences
Set up trace interactions and teleportation
Work with UMG and 2D UIs
Implement character inverse kinematics (IK) for head and hands
Define effective motion controller interaction
Help users avoid motion sickness
Optimize VR applications
Explore the VR editor, community resources, and more
If you're ready to master VR on Unreal Engine 4, this is the practical resource you've been searching for!
Register your product at informit.com/register for convenient access to downloads, updates, and corrections as they become available.
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
About the Author xix
Part I: Getting Started 1
Chapter 1: Terminology and Best Practices 3
Terminology 4
Best Practices 10
Summary 11
Chapter 2: Head Mounted Display Setup 13
Gear VR 14
Rift and Vive 32
Summary 42
Chapter 3: Toolkit 43
Generic Function Library 44
Oculus Function Library 45
Steam VR Function Library 47
Summary 47
Part II: Recipes 49
Chapter 4: Trace Interaction 51
Understanding Trace Interaction 52
Understanding Interfaces 55
Setting Up Trace Interaction 57
Setting Up a Basic Interactive Object 75
Summary 79
Exercises 80
Chapter 5: Teleportation 85
Setting Up Teleportation 86
Visualizing the Teleport 92
Simple Teleportation Volume 95
Summary 101
Exercises 101
Chapter 6: Unreal Motion Graphics and 2D User Interfaces 103
Challenges with 2D UI in VR 104
History and Compatibility of UMG 105
Basic VR Menu 105
Custom Menu Interaction 113
Summary 123
Exercises 123
Chapter 7: Character Inverse Kinematics 125
Introduction to Inverse Kinematics 126
Setting Up Head IK 127
Setting Up Hand IK 137
Summary 144
Exercises 145
Chapter 8: Motion Controller Interaction 147
Why Motion Controller Interaction Works 148
What to Look Out For: The Importance of Affordance 148
Shared Input of the Current Generation of Motion
Controllers 149
Setting Up the World Interaction Project 149
Interacting with Objects 151
Creating the Interactive Objects 163
Summary 187
Exercises 188
Chapter 9: VR Locomotion 189
Simulator Sickness 190
Locomotion Types 190
Locomotion Implementation 194
Summary 205
Exercises 205
Chapter 10: VR Optimization 207
Requirements of VR Rendering 208
Latency Mitigation 209
Performance Improvements 215
VR Project Settings 221
Summary 229
Exercises 229
Part III: Appendices 231
Appendix A: VR Editor 233
Enabling the VR Editor 234
Controlling the VR Editor 235
Summary 241
Appendix B: Resources 243
Epic 244
Oculus 244
Valve 244
Google 245
Community 245
Physical Meetups 245
Conferences 246
Index 247
