Specifications

welcome

Hello, and welcome to our MEAP! Thanks for joining us in this project to document and make

easy-to-use that brand new, not-even-released yet piece of the future of Virtual Reality, the

Oculus Rift. We’re ridiculously excited about the prospects of the hardware, and if our book

improves the quality of the software that folks write for it, then our work here is done. We

know that the Rift—in fact, all of VR—is terra incognita for many of our readers, so we’re

aiming this book at experienced object-oriented developers who may not know OpenGL or

advanced 3D graphics, but have at least seen them across the room at parties.

Oculus Rift in Action has a few simple goals:

1. Defuse all fear of coding for the Rift. Make it clear that it’s easy; make it clear that it’s

fun.

2. Walk the reader through the key methods of the Oculus SDK.

3. Offer advanced readers deeper insights into other languages, other platforms, and how

they can work more directly with the headset.

4. Show readers how not to make their users violently ill with motion sickness (and how to

avoid that fate while developing, too!)

What you’re looking at now is a small, very early section of our book, covering just the first

few chapters. Chapter One introduces you (our reader) to the Rift, covering the device and the

development process. Chapter Two walks the reader through the basics of interacting with the

Rift with examples of using the SDK to get input from the head tracker and send simple output

to the display, intended to get the ball rolling for early development without touching on any of

the thornier issues of VR.

What we’re hoping you’ll contribute, in exchange for this early preview, is solid technical

feedback on how we’ve structured our book, whether we’re teaching what we’re trying to

teach, and whether you feel like you’re actually learning how to code for the Rift. And, of

course, whether we’re right! If you spot bugs in the code, please let us know.

Sincerely yours,

Brad, Karen and Alex

other simple mistakes. These will be cleaned up during production of the book by copyeditors and proofreaders.

https://forums.manning.com/forums/oculus-rift-in-action