Developers working in Unity already have a fairly robust library of tools to help them create virtual reality (VR) videogames, animations and experiences, and now that set of tools is about to make Unity all you need to make you VR creations, even including live action recordings.
Now it’s easier than ever to make 360 trailers and experiences built for platforms such as YouTube, Within, Jaunt, Facebook 360 and Steam 360 Video. You can download the beta version of Unity from the Unity blog right now to test out the new features for yourself.
The new features are based on Google’s Omni-directional Stereo technology, and supports cubemaps natively in Unity’s graphics pipeline on both Editor and on PC standalone player. The blog goes into much more detail on how you can make full use of Unity’s latest features.
Not everything’s perfect though. The blog also states that certain shaders of shadow algorithms might have some issues, though they also suggest some fixes, too. Shadows seem to be the main issue right now, including screen space shadows. Hopefully this minor issues are solved in upcoming updates.
Unity also prompt their community to share their own creations. You can do so my sharing your creations with #madewithunity. It’s still an experimental feature, so more issues and bugs may yet crop up, so make sure to let the Unity developers know should you come across issues or wish to request more features. You can do so at the beta forum, which a link to is at the bottom of the Unity blog.
Any regular Unity users will immediately notice the 360 Stereo Capture selection under XR Settings, which is now required in order for Unity to generate 360 capture enabled shaders – these are usually not used at all in normal player builds.
We love 360 video here on VRFocus, which is why we regularly do our Life In 360 pieces, where we share with you all of the latest in the world of 360 video. We hope Unity’s latest features will give us even more content to write about every week, so of course we’re looking forward to the latest beta and what creators will come up with next. To see what’s next for Unity and content creators, make sure to keep reading VRFocus.
via Mint VR