Virtual Reality for Planners 3: Working with Unity

Building on the skills developed in Virtual Reality for Planners 1 and 2, this course teaches viewers how to assemble a virtual reality application from scratch using Unity, a popular real-time 3D game development engine. This course provides a high-level overview of the process involved in creating a virtual reality application and details about how to make the process as successful as possible. Included in the course materials is a code template designed to assist planners in creating a VR environment without having to write a single line of code.

Starting with an empty unity project, course instructor Chase Mullen walks through the process of adding features, SketchUp data, VR components, textures, backgrounds, sky, and fine-tuning the creation of a virtual reality environment that can be used to facilitate a diverse set of planning initiatives. 

The intent of this course is to create a simple VR experience in which a user can view an “existing” urban environment, and toggle between different levels of height or density. The models provided are intended to be somewhat generic and provide a framework with which to incrementally build a custom, unique virtual reality experience. By the end of this course, viewers will have the skills they need to create a virtual reality application from scratch in Unity.