Cardboard VR Projects for Android

Jonathan Linowes, Matt Schoen

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781785887871
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Informatique
• Subtopic: Matériel

Develop mobile virtual reality apps using the native Google Cardboard SDK for Android

About This Book

• Learn how to build practical applications for Google's popular DIY VR headset
• Build a reusable VR graphics engine on top of the Cardboard Java SDK and OpenGL ES graphics libraries
• The projects in this book will showcase a different aspect of Cardboard development—from 3D rendering to handling user input

Who This Book Is For

The book is for established Android developers with a good knowledge level of Java. No prior OpenGL or graphics knowledge is required. No prior experience with Google Cardboard is expected, but those who are familiar with Cardboard and are looking for projects to expand their knowledge can also benefit from this book.

What You Will Learn

• Build Google Cardboard virtual reality applications
• Explore the ins and outs of the Cardboard SDK Java classes and interfaces, and apply them to practical VR projects
• Employ Android Studio, Android SDK, and the Java language in a straightforward manner
• Discover and use software development and Android best practices for mobile and Cardboard applications, including considerations for memory management and battery life
• Implement user interface techniques for menus and gaze-based selection within VR
• Utilize the science, psychology, mathematics, and technology behind virtual reality, especially those pertinent to mobile Cardboard VR experiences
• Understand Cardboard VR best practices including those promoted by Google Design Lab.

In Detail

Google Cardboard is a low-cost, entry-level media platform through which you can experience virtual reality and virtual 3D environments. Its applications are as broad and varied as mobile smartphone applications themselves. This book will educate you on the best practices and methodology needed to build effective, stable, and performant mobile VR applications.

In this book, we begin by defining virtual reality (VR) and how Google Cardboard fits into the larger VR and Android ecosystem. We introduce the underlying scientific and technical principles behind VR, including geometry, optics, rendering, and mobile software architecture. We start with a simple example app that ensures your environment is properly set up to write, build, and run the app. Then we develop a reusable VR graphics engine that you can build upon. And from then on, each chapter is a self-contained project where you will build an example from a different genre of application, including a 360 degree photo viewer, an educational simulation of our solar system, a 3D model viewer, and a music visualizer.

Given the recent updates that were rolled out at Google I/O 2016, the authors of Cardboard VR Projects for Android have collated some technical notes to help you execute the projects in this book with Google VR Cardboard Java SDK 0.8, released in May 2016. Refer to the article at https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/GoogleVRUpdateGuideforCardbook.pdf which explains the updates to the source code of the projects.

Style and approach

This project based guide is written in a tutorial-style project format, where you will learn by doing. It is accompanied by in-depth explanations and discussions of various technologies, and provides best practices and techniques.

Cardboard VR Projects for Android

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Table of Contents

Cardboard VR Projects for Android

Credits

About the Authors

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

eBooks, discount offers, and more

Why subscribe?

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Virtual Reality for Everyone

Why is it called Cardboard?

The spectrum of VR devices

Old fashioned stereoscopes

Cardboard is mobile VR

Desktop VR and beyond

A gateway to VR

The value of low-end VR

Cardware!

Configuring your Cardboard viewer

Developing apps for Cardboard

Using Unity

Going native

An overview to VR best practices

Summary

2. The Skeleton Cardboard Project

What's in an Android app?

APK files

A Gradle build process

A Java compiler

The Android project structure

Getting started with Android Studio

Installing Android Studio

The Android Studio user interface

Creating a new Cardboard project

Adding the Cardboard Java SDK

The AndroidManifest.xml file

The activity_main.xml file

The MainActivity class

Default onCreate

Building and running

Summary

3. Cardboard Box

Creating a new project

Hello, triangle!

Introducing geometry

Triangle variables

onSurfaceCreated

Introducing OpenGL ES 2.0

Simple shaders

The compileShaders method

The prepareRenderingTriangle method

onDrawEye

Building and running

3D camera, perspective, and head rotation

Welcome to the matrix

The MVP vertex shader

Setting up the perspective viewing matrices

Render in perspective

Building and running

Repositioning the triangle

Hello, cube!

The cube model data

Cube code

Lighting and shading

Adding shaders

Cube normals and colors

Preparing the vertex buffers

Preparing the shaders

Adding a light source

Building and running the app

Spinning the cube

Hello, floor!

Shaders

Floor model data

Variables

onCreate

onSurfaceCreated

initializeScene

prepareRenderingFloor

onDrawEye

drawFloor

Hey, look at this!

The isLookingAtObject method

Summary

4. Launcher Lobby

Creating a new project

Adding Hello Virtual World text overlay

A simple text overlay

Center the text using a child view

Create stereoscopic views for each eye

Controlling the overlay view from MainActivity

Using a virtual screen

Responding to head look

Adding an icon to the view

Listing installed Cardboard apps

Queries for Cardboard apps

Create the Shortcut class for apps

Add shortcuts to OverlayView

Using view lists in OverlayEye

Highlighting the current shortcut

Using the trigger to pick and launch the app

Further enhancements

Summary

5. RenderBox Engine

Introducing RenderBox – a graphics engine

Creating a new project

Creating the RenderBox package folder

Creating an empty RenderBox class

Adding the IRenderBox interface

Materials, textures, and shaders

Abstract material

The Math package

MathUtils

Matrix4

Quaternion

Vector2

Vector3

The Transform class

Parent methods

Position methods

Rotation methods

Scale methods

Transform to matrix and draw

The Component class

The RenderObject component

The Cube RenderObject component

Vertex color material and shaders

Vertex color shaders

VertexColorMaterial

The Camera component

RenderBox methods

A simple box scene

Cube with face normals

The Light component

Vertex color lighting material and shaders

Time for animation

Detect looking at objects

Exporting the RenderBox package

Building the RenderBoxLib module

The RenderBox test app

Using RenderBox in future projects

Summary

6. Solar System

Setting up a new project

Creating a Sphere component

A solid color lighted sphere

Solid color lighting shaders

Solid color lighting material

Adding a Material to a Sphere

Viewing the Sphere

Adding the Earth texture material

Loading a texture file

Diffuse lighting shaders

Diffuse lighting material

Adding diffuse lighting texture to a Sphere component

Viewing the Earth

Changing the camera position

Day and night material

Day/night shader

The DayNightMaterial class

Rendering with day/night

Creating the Sun

Unlit texture shaders

Unlit texture material

Rendering with an unlit texture

Adding the Sun

Creating a Planet class

Formation of the Solar System

Setting up planets in MainActivity

Camera's planet view

Animating the heavenly bodies

A starry sky dome

Fine tuning the Earth

The night texture

Axis tilt and wobble

Changing the camera location

Possible enhancements

Updating the RenderBox library

Summary

7. 360-Degree Gallery

Setting up the new project

Viewing a 360-degree photo

Viewing a sample photosphere

Using the background image

Viewing a regular photo

Defining the Plane component and allocating buffers

Adding materials to the Plane component

Adding an image screen to the scene

Putting a border frame on the image

Border shaders

The border material

Using the border material

Loading and displaying a photo image

Defining the image class

Reading images into the app

Image load texture

Showing an image on the screen

Rotating to the correct orientation

Dimensions to correct the width and height

Sample image down to size

Loading and displaying a photosphere image

The image gallery user interface

Positioning the photo screen on the left

Displaying thumbnails in a grid

The thumbnail image

The Thumbnail class

The thumbnail grid

Gaze to load

Gaze-based highlights

Selecting and showing photos

Queue events

Using a vibrator

Enable scrolling

Creating the Triangle component

Adding triangles to the UI

Interacting with the scroll buttons

Implementing the scrolling method

Stay responsive and use threads

An explanation of threading and virtual reality

Launch with an intent

Showing/hiding the grid with tilt-up gestures

Spherical thumbnails

Add a sphere to the Thumbnail class

Updating the RenderBox library

Further possible enhancements

Summary

8. 3D Model Viewer

Setting up a new project

Understanding the OBJ file format

Creating the ModelObject class

Parse OBJ models

buildBuffers

Model extents, scaling, and center

I'm a little teapot

I'm a little rotating teapot

Thread safe

Launch with intent

Practical and production ready

Summary

9. Music Visualizer

Setting up a new project

Capturing audio data

A VisualizerBox architecture

Waveform data capture

A basic geometric visualization

2D texture-based visualization

Texture generator and loader

Waveform shaders

Basic waveform material

Waveform visualization

FFT visualization

Capture the FFT audio data

FFT shaders

Basic FFT material

FFT visualization

Trippy trails mode

Multiple simultaneous visualizations

Random visualizations

Further enhancements

A community invite

Summary

Onward to the future

Index

Cardboard VR Projects for Android

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Table of contents

• Cardboard VR Projects for Android