Our goal in this project was to introduce the novice reader to many commonly used VR techniques and best practices. Our investigation began preproduction planning and design. In this phase, we looked at planning the experience and setting up the Unity environment for VR development, which included a look at the Oculus Virtual Reality plugin. This package contains scripts and prefabs for facilitating VR interactions, camera management, grasping with Touch Controllers, haptic response, debugging tools, and an avatar system.

With the OVR elements in place, we looked at the level design technique of gray boxing. This is an early design technique used to prototype our scene, focusing on mechanics, movement, and interaction. Instead of finished models, textures, and visual effects, we reduced our palette to primitive shapes, grayscale colors, and simple materials. Without the distraction of the environment's aesthetics, this process lets us focus on the environment's entertainment value over its look and feel.

From here we set about building the play areas, props, animations' and scripts to facilitate user interactions. Along the way, we donned the Rift headset to conduct functional testing, adjusting and tweaking our scene as needed. Many of the choices were left to the reader to add their own creative spin to the project.

As a prelude to constructing a player movement system, we discussed procedures for combating VR sickness/discomfort. Building on 30+ years of work done by researchers and industry developers, we presented six key procedures for creating comfortable experiences. These simple principles provide the reader with valuable guidelines for future VR projects and the tools needed to build a teleport system within the Midway project.

From there the project moved on to building the game props and scripts to play the games. The skills and techniques addressed in this project go well beyond the uses we illustrated in this project. VR is being used to train employees, explore data in new ways, and help businesses improve their support and services. With practice and creativity, we expect you to go out and find uses for VR in your professional and social life.

Instead of whacking moles, consider creating a physical therapy game that measures a player's recover rate after surgery. Or, with a few adjustments, the same script can be used to train factory workers on new equipment and procedures. Or maybe you want to build a virtual interface for a physical system. We urge you to think beyond the technology and instead consider the broader possibilities presented in virtual reality.