Developer Log (Written after the fact) 3

This is going to be a Unity and semi-oculus specific discussion. Slightly has bits of programming but don't let that scare you! Unity programming is not bad at all! It's actually really simple, if you can find the information on how to link it all together. 

YouTube has been an amazing resource and the internet is the best teacher imo. Unity does have guides but they are hit and miss. They are as deep as a kiddy pool and about as fun for an adult. It'll do on a boiling summer's day but it's also just as easy to contort yourself into the fridge every 5 minutes and then you can stay inside.

Things I learned in a real hurry:

• Oculus interaction is broken up into two different non-interchangable main libraries. (Others exist but let's keep it simple here. Imagine this is for Zaphod...)
• The OVR interaction toolkit is managed by Oculus/Meta and will only work for Oculus devices. While it saves some time for grabbing objects, teleporting, walking, blah blah it's limited by that "only for Oculus" thing really badly.
• The XR interaction toolkit meanwhile works for well... Alot of stuff. Here's a guide from unity in more detail
• Therefore in order to make it as accessible as possible I opted for the latter system and it's been worth it definitely!

Web browsers and video players in Oculus is not easy. I have up and bought a license for my interactable browsers. The bonus of this is I make them all link through my personal blog website and I can write really cool html/js/css and embed other pages inside of canvas items in the museum. That's like a super power and probably how "billboards and ads" in games might one day work. Which is sucky if I'm the eventually architect of VR billboards. Douglas would come back to life just to tell at me.... Maybe its not the worst thing after all.

Tutorials I watched and followed that were handy:

• https://www.mindport.co/vr-builder-tutorials/xr-interaction-toolkit-set
• https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/unity/unity-xr-plugin/

Alot of my stuff was all just experimenting with stuff until I figured it out.

In the end the playing around paid off and I learned the basics of how to teleport around, make platforms to take me far ranges, make stuff interactable, have UI and canvas browsers and more. Self taught from the Internet and previous Non VR programming experience. 

I did cheat I feel by buying the browser asset, but I personally tried for weeks and weeks to make any free version and it was just taking up too much time. The browser asset I used eventually is the Vuplex one and it works well. The license isn't cheap though and it has different versions for "desktop" vrs or standalone like rift and quest are two different licenses. Therefore the PC standalone non-VR version will not have browsers sadly...I don't see the point when you can just go to the pages on my website in a web browser and watch it. 

In part 4 I'll show the process I used for making some of the assets in paint.net and how I made the PA announcements with TTS and audacity!