Running VR for students without an attached headset

Hi All,

I’m a teacher and very new to unity but love it as a development platform for my students. My question relates to whether you need an external device (such as oculus or gear etc) to view VR within unity?

I’d like to give my students the ability to develop something for VR and then be able to view it without having to purchase a really expensive headset. Is this even possible?

My thoughts were that I might be able to buy a VR ready environment from the unity store and then give it to the students for their use... and then view it so they could interact with their environment as a teaser to VR.

Many thanks,
Mark

 

Hi, if you dont want to spend for Oculus and GearVR headsets so the best solution is basic VR Headsets which is affordable like Google Cardboard or the plastic ones wld be better choice for long time usage especially if we think that your students will use it often. Here are some choices for you to check out basic standard plastic VR headsets ;

https://www.amazon.com/slp/google-cardboard-plastic/4qkbygso6pqf4ev

Some models have Bluetooth Controller which is a good idea to get one of those models for a future that you will teach interacting in the enviroment you created..

 

You can't view VR without a VR headset...

 

Hi @Mark-Kelly-74,

In the player settings, you can choose to use the "MockHMD" instead of a real HMD. The MockHMD attempts to simulate a Vive in the editor. It will use the same occlusion mesh, fov, aspect ratio, eye texture width/height, asymmetric projection matrices, etc. You can also use it to verify your shader work correctly with the various stereo rendering methods.


The output can be displayed in editor in a variety of ways. You can display a single eye, both eyes side by side, or both eyes side by side along with the occlusion mesh as shown above. The MockHMD can be helpful during development however it would be best if you also test your project on a real HMD as well. I hope that helps.

 

if you use steamvr, there is a fallback mode that will show you your project with just a regular camera and you can even do interactions with the mouse...the fall back mode is automatic if you dont have a headset plugged in (using the player prefab).