It’s still not clear exactly how best to build modified FOVs. \u00a0We need more complicated scenes; here are a few things we might use to generate\u00a0them:<\/p>\n
Unity has a nice editor, and we can expect students to be familiar with it. \u00a0I don’t think we get source code.<\/p>\n
Unity claims they’ll have Rift support for free users soon.<\/a> \u00a0That was in September.<\/p>\n Unity pro already has support, and costs either $75 \/ month (with\u00a0a 12 month contract), or $1,500. \u00a0That’s per component; if we want the base and android, that’s $150 \/ month, or $3,000.<\/p>\n For educational licencing, we could contact them as suggested on the official site:<\/p>\n https:\/\/store.unity3d.com\/education<\/p>\n Or purchase from\u00a0the official reseller:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.studica.com\/unity<\/p>\n They offer all components in a watermarked version for $150 per year, individual components for a one-time $750, or all components for a one-time $1,999; we’d want the main component, and maybe\u00a0android or ios.<\/p>\n These are all pre-orders for Unity 5.<\/p>\n Studica claims all of their discounts\u00a0end on October 31st, 2014.<\/p>\n Unreal Engine<\/strong><\/p>\n With this we get source; it’s unclear how it compares to Unity. \u00a0They also have a visual editor, and some weird pegs-and-wires visual programming system that I’m a little curious to see in the wild, how it shapes the way people think about programming.<\/p>\n Free to students via the Github Student Developer Pack<\/a>. \u00a0They’ve given me access for a year; I think there’s some kind of renewal process after.<\/p>\n Free to schools by filling out the form at the bottom of this page<\/a>.<\/p>\n Non-educational\u00a0licences are $20 \/ month; with both educational and non-, they claim 5% of your profits if you launch a commercial product.<\/p>\n Just Load Something and Draw It<\/strong><\/p>\n Both of those will sometimes be inflexible; even with the full source code of Unreal, even simple modifications mean\u00a0a lot of\u00a0learning their system. \u00a0Implicit in the act of research is doing things established engines don’t expect.<\/p>\n For quick tests and simple scenes, we might want a really barebones way to load, manipulate, and render models. \u00a0For that, I’m looking at Open Asset Import Library<\/a>.<\/p>\n I haven’t yet had time to look at these in detail; a future post may have\u00a0some kind of\u00a0comparison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s still not clear exactly how best to build modified FOVs. \u00a0We need more complicated scenes; here are a few things we might use to generate\u00a0them: Unity Unity has a nice editor, and we can expect students to be familiar … Continue reading