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by sayangel 3944 days ago
As others have stated, there are several options.

Here's a general breakdown:

-hardware- cardboard, Oculus Rift Development Kit (DK2), GearVR (ionly compatible with Galaxy S6 or Note 4), mobile VR viewers (durovis, wearlity, DIY 3D printed headset, etc.)

-software- Unity, Unreal Engine, ThreeJS + WebVR

The most lightweight route is probably getting your hands on a google cardboard and using Unity to get your hands dirty. For basic things you can just use Unity's visual interface. The challenge is really just learning to navigate Unity, not so much understanding graphics. It's mainly C# or UnityScript, which is essentially Unity's javascript mutant child.

For me, one of the best ways to get assimilated with VR was actually using the webVR API (http://webvr.info/). It's a JS based way to interface with the Oculus Rift or Cardboard. Using Three.JS to set up scenes and then using the webVR API to render stereo, get sensor data, etc. was a fast way for me to learn VR development.

Since you've mentioned you're adept with graphics and programming then maybe it's worth exploring Unreal as it's a bit more advanced, but can produce some awesome results.

Happy to answer any other questions!

2 comments

I agree about WebVR, but the last time I tried developing for it Oculus drivers had changed and the browser plugins weren't working. I'd make sure it works before getting a DK2 with the intention of doing WebVR work.
Make sure you're using no later than Oculus Runtime v0.6 if you want the current versions of WebVR-enabled Firefox and Chromium to work. They're both currently built against Oculus SDK v0.5, and they only support one previous version at a time with the betas.

I don't think there is a link to it directly from the Oculus developer's site. But it is available if you Google it.

I believe the WebVR teams are looking into using OSVR to avoid having this issue in the future.

Make sure whatever hardware you get is compatible with the toolset you choose. Last time I checked there was still no support for webVR on GearVR
There is no official support, but from what I understand, it's possible to get it working.