Virtual Reality has been picking up since the announcement of the Oculus Rift in 2015. Today VR is accessible by using Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, HTC Vive , soon to be launched Google’s Daydream and lowest cost option, Google Cardboard. In addition, companies have started investing in building new products in this space and many showcased their solutions in the CES 2016 expo including Sony, SoftKinetic, Virtuix, etc.
Going forward, Virtual Reality will be more and more interesting and will start empowering our day to day lives, and would change our behavior and thinking patterns, and so the decisions! You need to start thinking how it will impact your business too….
How can Synerzip help?
Synerzip can develop VR applications for a variety of domains: Academia, R&D, Marketing, Advertising, Medical, Retail, Travel and Tourism, Training and Simulation, Virtual Prototyping and 3D Modeling.
The developed VR applications can be supported on all leading VR hardware devices like:
Oculus Rift , Samsung Gear VR along with Samsung Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+, or Note 5 handset, Android / iOS handsets using Google Cardboard.
Types of Virtual Reality Experiences
There are many VR apps and experiences for education, travel, music and more, but not all experiences are computer-generated. A new type of camera captures images, records video and audio in 360º. This immersive video puts you at the center of the action, and gives you the freedom to look anywhere in your environment. An example would be you sitting on your couch of your home and attending a pre-recorded event or live training session happening in a different country.
Interacting with a VR App
Interacting with VR apps is easy once you get the hang of it. Most apps use one of two interaction methods. The first and simplest is gaze-based interaction. You simply look at what you want to select, and hold your gaze on it for a second or two. The second type of interaction is by using a wired or Bluetooth controller connected to the mobile. In this case, you’d look at what you want to select, then press a button to select it. The controller can also be used to perform an action like pausing a video or controlling a character.
Working with a Mobile VR
Your iOS or Android smartphone becomes the window to the virtual world. Once inserted into the Google Cardboard or Samsung Gear VR, your phone tracks your head movement, so you’re able to look up, down and all around in a virtual environment. In addition to head tracking, VR apps also split the screen into left and right images that appear in 3D when viewed through the Google/Samsung headset. Together with headtracking, this 3D effect creates a feeling of immersion, making you feel as if you’re actually experiencing the same.
Uses of Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality can be used for depicting real-life experiences in a variety of industries, including:
- Education – To teach and collaborate in virtual classrooms.
- Medicine – To understand anatomy and travel into the human brain or to tackle your fears.
- Travel – To fly. Be free in space or explore holiday destinations.
- Real Estate – To get a virtual tour of the houses, gardens and apartments of your future homes.
- Entertainment – To play games and watch all those eye-catching animated movies.
Some VR experiences to look at:
- Oculus 360 photography https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98UbI5NFANA
- Journey Through The Galaxy – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glYyd3XYM5Q
- Walking New York https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0-89v4Fk-M
- VR Apartment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMLl_f7d3Tk
Future of Virtual Reality
Though the Virtual Reality phenomenon is just beginning, it will be a game changer for all businesses.
Check the predictions made by Deloitte:
Synerzip uses the following tools to develop VR applications:
Unity3D 5.3
Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies. It is used to develop video games for PCs, consoles, mobile devices and websites.
Unity Plugins
For Oculus Rift: Oculus Utilities for Unity 5
For Samsung Gear VR: Oculus Mobile SDK 0.6.0.1
For Google Cardboard: Google VR SDK for Unity
Gimp
Gimp (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image retouching and editing, free-form drawing, resizing, cropping, photo montages, converting between different image formats, and more specialized tasks.
360º camera or Google’s “Cardboard Camera” Android application
To capture 360º photos and 360º videos that are used as the content of the VR application.
Advantages of using Unity3D for creating VR Applications
- Excellent balance of ease of use and power
- Supports 21+ platforms (PC, Console, Mobile, Web)
- Performance scales extremely well from simple games/applications for low-end mobile to complex games/applications for high-end consoles
- Built-in physical-based rendering and extendable rendering pipeline all very high end graphics performance
- Many robust built-in features like occlusion culling, AI navmesh generation, content streaming, and particle systems
- Supports C# and JavaScript for scripting
- Solid content pipeline makes it almost effortless to bring in content from a huge variety of tools
- Extremely robust asset store has many useful add-ons and content, and also is a potential revenue stream for developers
- Out-of-the-box VR support
- Loads of official and community tutorials
- Useful services like Unity Ads, Unity Analytics, and Unity Cloud Build
- Easy for programmers, easy for designers
Other alternatives for developing VR applications
Game Engines
