Kyle Slyva’s Final VR Project

Kyle Slyva’s Final VR Project


When I set out to do this final project, I will say that my goal was a little ambitious. My plan was to on create a scene in Unity where the user gets onto a virtual reality motorcycle and rides it through a city with with traffic to simulate a real motorcycle experience. I wanted the user to be able to use the Oculus Rift and grab onto the virtual handlebar and use it in the same manner that it would be used in real life (like using the throttle for speed, squeezing the breaks to slow down, and turning your hands to change directions). Although I had no experience in integrating Oculus programs into Unity, I still felt that I could tackle the challenge.

While going through the process of researching Oculus-Unity tutorials and understanding the complexity of the integration, I started to realize that some of the functions in my initial concept were most likely not making it into my final project. One of the issues I had was incorporating the Oculus scripts and prefabs with Playmaker. It seemed like it should have been straight forward but no matter how much I tested or played around with it, I couldn't get some of the simple functions to work.

The final scene involved bringing in some of the aspects from the Vehicle assets in Unity and attaching them to the motorcycle. The handlebar is intractable but unfortunately I was unable to incorporate the turning functions into it. The bike is entirely operated by the joystick on the oculus controllers. There was a lot of hacking involved to finally pull this off but overall I am relatively satisfied that I was able to make it work.

One of the biggest issues and concerns while developing this project was how dizzy it made me. As a disclaimer for anyone who is testing this project out in VR: Make sure to go slow and stick to flat ground. Once I finally got the functions to work properly, I was so excited that I decided to take it off a jump which was a terrible idea for my stomach. It is really enjoyable to feel that first person experience of riding the bike in VR, but as soon as the elevation changes while riding it will start to be nauseating.

In the end, I was still able to make a relatively functioning project, and I will say that this project has made me want to continue learning about how to incorporate Oculus with Unity.

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