Setting up Unity for Gear VR development

posted by under Technology ,

After a full day of trying out different approaches and realizing there are many outdated blogs/videos on how to get Unity set up for Gear VR development I thought I would publish my own version on how I got it to work. Here goes.

Download Your Tools!
1. Download the latest Unity version. I’m using Unity 5.5.0b5 (yes the Beta Personal Release)
2. Download the Oculus Utilities for Unity 5 V1.8.0 from Oculus.
3. Download SideloadVR Device ID from Google Play (There’s a reason why, but I wont go into it here)
4. Download Oculus Platform SDK 1.8.0.

Once you have all the items you’ll need installed and unzipped, open up Unity and create a new 3D Project. Next Steps:

Set up Unity
1. Unzip Oculus Utilities and drag the “OculusUtilities.unitypackage” file into your “Assets” directory. Import EVERYTHING.
2. unzip Oculus Platform SDK and drag the OVRPlatformSDK_v1.8.0/Unity/OculusPlatform file into your “Assets” directory. Import EVERYTHING.
2. Add in 3D prefabs as normal.
3. Add in a OVRCameraRig Prefab from the Assets/OVR/Prefabs/ directory onto your scene.

Creating your Dev Key
Before you publish you’re going to need an Oculus Signature File and follow the below steps. This step will need to be repeated FOR EACH device you want to run the app on.

1. Open the Oculus Sig File Creator Tool
2. Open your SideloadVR Device ID app and retrieve your device ID. Very important that you use THIS device ID and no other.
3. Add the device ID into the Oculus Sig File Creator Tool and download the file.
4. Once you have the file add the file into the “Assets/Plugins/Android/assets” directory.

Dev Publishing
Once you’re ready to run your app, create the build using these steps.

1. Open up File -> Build Settings.
2. Within the “Build Settings”. Select “Android” from the “Platforms” pane and click “Switch Platform”.
3. On the right hand side select, “ETC2”, for Texture Compression.
4. Make sure you check, “Development Build”.
5. Click on “Player Settings” and within the “Other Settings” section check, “Virtual Reality Support” and make sure “Virtual Reality SDKs” is set to Oculus.
6. Finally make sure “Minimum API Level is 22 or higher.

Good luck and happy VR developing.

Home is where the heart is…

posted by under Personal Rants

I was out running today after a better than usual day at the office. I work from home. Either way, I started to think about all the homes, lofts, and apartments I’ve lived in. None of the compared to the apartment where I grew up in. I remember the week we moved to our new home on 57st, when I was 15-16-ish, and going back to the apartment and taking a nap there. An empty apartment where i once called home.

When i dream I usually dream of living there. When I think of heaven, I guess I would live there again.

My children, I hope they feel the same way of this place one day. I hope they have this house in their dreams and hope to live forever in it. Its tough being a dad sometimes. It feels like you fail most of the time. Its hard.

I secretly still go to the apartments and walk the yard, the alley, and sometimes sit on the stairs wishing I could run up and open the door and head into my room. But I cant.

That’s life.

Armando Padilla

VR and Android Notes – Day 2

posted by under Technology , ,

This will encompass Day 1 as well and this will be more of a place to collect my thoughts as I play with this.

Recently I went to a meet up where a Google Cardboard was given to me. I fell in love with it soon after lol. The plan is to create a small prototype app with a few apis.

The tools
Javascript or Android native or Unity? Hard choices. I started off with Javascript, Three.js and quickly found that its more of a JS library to create worlds, which is great but its missing the magnetometer required for Google Cardboard interactions. As of this writing, my research doesnt show that there is a magnetometer API in JS. No not tilting of the screen but the actual magnetometer event API. This looks promising though, https://github.com/w3c/sensors, and will keep my eye on it.

Day 1 Goals
I’ve decided to go with the Android Native Java language since the goal im trying to reach isng a game but rather display of data.

Day 2 Goals
I’ve set up my dev environment, hooked up my Google cardboard, and have the example running on my local environment . So far so good. Next up creating a flat world for myself.