Part of my sabbatical project is learning new game development skills, and one I’m really excited about is programming in virtual reality in Unity.
After a bit of searching, I settled on getting an Oculus Rift Touch. It comes with a headset with headphones, two sensors, and two hand-held controls. Setting it all up requires a fair number of USB and HDMI ports.
More research uncovered that the Oculus, and any current VR headset, would only work on a Windows PC, and the graphics card and processing requirements were quite high. With only my four-year-old MacBook Pro at hand, it was time for an upgrade to an Oculus Ready machine. I settled on an Acer Aspire GX with the following components:
- 3.6 GHz Intel Core i7-7700 Quad-Core
- 16GB DDR4 RAM
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB GDDR5)
- 1TB HDD
This was affordable, but not at the bare minimum of requirements, and has proven to be a great machine for the Oculus. It has also worked well as an intense research computer for crunching through parallel card-game simulations, but more about that in another post.
With my smaller sabbatical office space, I’m trying to get the most coverage with the sensors. I’ve cleared out a table and bookshelf, and put the sensors on the desk and wall, aiming for as much overlap coverage as I can get. I also tried extending the range of one sensor, picking up a 10ft USB 3.0 cable, but with no extra power, it did not work as advertised. I haven’t yet attempted the 3rd sensor setup for roomscale games, but hope to by the end of the year.
So far I have played and enjoyed
Going to the International Space Station is quite the experience, and you really get a zero-gravity feel by moving with your hands, although orienting by joystick pulls you out of the immersion sensation. Lucky’s Tale, a 3D platformer, is fun to watch, and while the puzzles in Luna range from exceedingly easy to very obtuse, it is gorgeous.
Up next on my list to play are
Do you have any suggestions? Want to try out my setup? If you’re in town, I’d be happy to show you how it works, please sign up for an appointment. to demo some games!
My first game attempts are going to a 3D version of Axiom, converting my old Java implementation to C#, and a gardening/planting/growth game. Look for more updates when I start development.