About the project:

Virtual Reality is a concept that has been explored for some time. This idea has been observed in many fictional works of art throughout human history. The current trend of virtual reality is gaining momentum in our society. Our understanding of the natural world has developed to the point where ideas are paving the way for these old motifs to become part of our reality. There are now virtual reality headsets that are beginning to demonstrate these principles.The programmer is no longer confinded to think in such a low level as adjusting individual pixels and vertices in the screen. The programmers must now think in many other dimensions, creating environments first and building from there for users to interact with. These stand alone systems requires a lot of back end programming to display graphics to the screen, especially for those that are specifically designed for use of video-games.

For our project we have implemented the Razer Hydra motion controls to work with our virtual Campus in the Unity game engine. We utilized an adapter, the Motion Creator, which maps the buttons of the Hydra to correspond with the controls within the level. We have begun building more of the layout of the University, which will eventually allow a user to experience a fully immersive virtual tour of the campus. Later on we plan to add more details by implementing better textures, objectives, and a more intuitive interface. We have started the process of getting our virtual tour of campus to become compatible with as many avaible platforms such as possible; These will include Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux. When this project is complete, it will be available for students to check out at the Engineering Computing Center

Instructor:

Sergiu Dascalu - Professor in University of Nevada Reno

External Advisors:

      Todd Colegrove -

      Bob Larmore -

Project Related Resources:

      Project V1.0

      Project V1.1

      Oculus Rift Output

      Razer Hydra Input

      Unity Game Engine