Chapter 7. Virtual Reality Toolkit: Open Source Framework for the Community

Virtual Reality Toolkit (VRTK) is an open source, cross-platform toolkit for rapidly building virtual reality (VR) experiences by providing easy-to-use solutions to common problems. VRTK focuses on two main areas of help for developers: interactions and locomotion techniques, offering a multitude of ways of solving these common problems. 

What Is VRTK and Why People Use It?

VRTK is an open source codebase that allows users to drag and drop functionality. By being able to drag and drop Assets into Uniity 3D, with a few configurations, they can immediately open example scenes with ready-set fully functional essential gameplay mechanics such as locomotion, navmeshes, a variety of user interfaces, and physical interactions around which you can start building your game.

With the benefits of it being open source, anyone can immediately reduce their setup time and immediately begin customizing assets and the source code to manifest their ideas in Unity for rapid prototyping—at the very least.

The major benefits to this toolkit are that it’s the only one of its kind that is readily adaptable to any hardware on which you plan to develop: Oculus + Touch controllers, HTC Vive, mixed reality (MR) headsets, mobile VR headsets. Because hardware accessibility can be a barrier to many aspiring or new VR creators, the default of its use includes a VR simulator. The VR simulator allows ...

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