XR Starter

Little starter project for XR development.

Designed for Hololens (MRTK), but should be fine for other platforms too.

Includes

• MRTK (helpful utils for MR development)
• Photon (sharing)
• Vuforia (marker-based tracking)
• Initial tracking marker

Prerequisites

Install the following - you can skip Android/IOS/UWP things depending on what platform you're targetting

• Unity 2018.3.9f1 (Tip: Use the Unity Hub or Unity download archive)
• Include the following Unity components when installing (if relevant for your platform)
  • Vuforia
  • Android Build Support
  • iOS Build Support
  • UWP Build Support (IL2CPP)
  • UWP Build Support (.NET)
  • Windows Build Support (IL2CPP)
• Visual Studio 2017
• Include the following workloads (not 100% sure on these...)
  • Universal Windows Platform development
  • .NET desktop development
  • .NET Core cross-platform development
• Windows 10 SDK (tested with 10.0.17134.0)
• Android SDK (tested with android-28)
• XCode or whatever you iOS folk use

Usage

Cloning and opening

• Clone this repo
• Open Unity Hub
• Click "Open"
• Navigate to .\XR-Starter and open
• Choose 2018.3.0f2 version when opening
• Wait for things to compile

Use a better layout

The default Unity layout is bad. Go to Window -> Layouts -> Tall for a better one.

I'd also suggest adjusting the following

• Change the Project tab to be One Column Layout using the view menu (hamburger) in the top right
• Seperate the Scene tab from the Game tab so you can see them both at once

Open the right scene

When you first launch, there's a good chance it will just be an empty scene

• In the inspector, navigate to _game, Scene, Main and double click it

• Look around the scene by double-clicking game objects in the inspector to focus them, or holding down your RMB in the scene window and using WASD for movement whilst it is held down

Set up a unique room id for sharing

• Select the Sharing GameObject

• Enter a unique value for your own Room Id - if you're in a team, use the same Room Id.

Targeting your platform

Unity will almost certainly be targeting PC standalone initially - which won't work for the sort of app we're building (Hololens or phone or whatever)

Switch to the appropriate platform:

• File, Build Settings
• Select:
  • Mixed Reality: Universal Windows Platform
  • Android: Android
  • iOS: iOS
• Select Switch Platform

Test in the editor

Hit the Play button to start running it in the editor. This uses MRTK's camera movement and interaction shims to simulate the Hololens and hands.

Use the following controls

• Right-Click drag: Look around
• WASD: While RMB is down, flies around
• Shift/Space: Bring virtual hands into view with finger up
• Click: Bring finger down

TLDR: hold down RMB and use WASD. When you want to air tap, shift+click LMB

Regarding gameplay

• Air-tapping the cube will toggle it on or off (shared to all clients)
• All players in the same room will be visible as small avatars that move around

Check your project builds

Mixed Reality (Hololens or WMR occluded devices)

• Ensure your platform is set to UWP in Build Settings
• In the menu, choose Mixed Reality Toolkit, Build Window
• Click "Build All"

Note: If you have issues here, ensure you are building in Release mode for x86 and targeting Direct3D (not XAML)

Your console should report success

Android

• Ensure your platform is set to Android in Build Settings
• In build settings, select Build

This should give you an .apk file where you specify.

Let me know if you get "Build and Run" working, but I had to adb install foo.apk to get it installed on my device.

Note: Ensure ARCore is installed on your phone/tablet, to get much better tracking after the marker is found

IOS

• Ensure your platform is set to Android in Build Settings
• In build settings, select Build

This will make an xcode project in the folder you specify.

You're on your own now, because iOS is not my wheelhouse

Project structure

This project probably shouldn't be used for inspiration - but it'll do for a hacky workshop :)

Scene Organisation

The scene is organised in the following structure

• Vuforia - Everything needed to detect a marker and anchor the scene there
• Sharing - Connects to a Photon server and auto joins a room. Click-free sharing.
• Mixed Reality Bits - A few things to handle mixed reality - the cursor and input manager
• MixedRealityCameraParent - Prefab from MRTK with the same name.
  • Vuforia Instructions - Guiding text and occlusion plane to identify Vuforia marker
• SceneRoot - The origin for the scene. Will be placed dead in the middle of the tracking marker.
  • Togglable Spinning Cube - Sample game object sharing state with all other devices

Assets

All app-specific assets should be put in the _game folder - this reduces clutter when it comes to importing store assets, which always end up in the root (annoyingly).

There are a couple exceptions, otherwise it would be too easy.

• Vuforia configuration is in Assets/Resources/VuforiaConfiguration
• Remote spawned prefabs (eg. the player in this case) need to go in Assets/Resources, as they are loaded by path
• Photon configuration is in Assets/Photon/PhotonUnityNetworking/Resources/PhotonServerSettings

Overview

The initial scene is simple - a spinning cube (toggleable by clicking it)

Vuforia

Vuforia is configured entirely in the Vuforia prefab, along with the standard VuforiaConfiguration asset.

A couple scripts are involved to get it all going

• VuforiaConfigurator - This configures Vuforia appropriately for the target platform options, and handles setting the scene root based on the marker.
• TurnOff Behaviour - Simply turns off the renderer for the image target. Out of the box Vuforia, why deviate from the norm?

Sharing

This project uses PUN for sharing - Photon Unity Networking.

The RoomManager script is responsible for auto joining the room and spawning player prefabs as other players join.

The Player prefab contains a visual display of the remote user's position, and uses a ShareLocalTransform script to ensure the positions are sent and received to and from peers.

See the spinning cube for another example of sharing.