Building up a VR interactive
scene
Considered that VR technology is not mature yet for the time being,
desktop-based VR can generate a much more vivid world compared with
portable device despite its poor portability. VR application has already
possessed great variety and applied in gaming, medical, tourism even
building construction thanks to its immersive, interactive and
imaginative. However, design of interaction as well as choose of VR
device and development tool for VR application are different from each
other currently, making it difficult to realize real-time monitoring on
VR application performance. Desktop-based VR based on Unity 3D engine
and HTC Vive device are applied in this paper for VR interactive scene
design and real-time monitor via monitoring SDK.
2.1 Introduction on Virtual Reality Toolkit
Virtual Reality Toolkit, or VRTK, provides the scripts of following
features:
- Event associated with device input and interaction. As an input, HTC
Vive provides Touchpad panel, Grip button, Trigger button, Application
Menu button and System button, shown as Fig.1. Each event is activated
upon user input via pressing the button, where developers can define
the content in detail. In addition, man-machine interact including
touch, grab and use of object are all linked to an event respectively
which is independent from events triggered from input. Such
independence can provide developer with more flexibility in
development via combining different button events and interaction
events.
- World pointer. World pointer is a visible laser beam launched from
joystick designed for aiming at the target in VR application scenes.
It is usually used as a method of selecting the target position in
user displacement, or confirming the object for interaction in design
of VR interactions.
- User displacement. In VR scenes, user realize displacement either in
speed mode or destination mode, where scripts are applied respectively
for developers to execute, and extend if necessary.
- Interact with object via joystick. Interaction can be realized once
the scripts allowing for interact are associated with object in VR
scene and joystick simultaneously. VRTK provides developers with
simple interaction including touch, grab and use an object via
joystick.