Virtual reality is an exciting new direction in application development which implies new storytelling formats and more powerful ways to convey emotion and sensation. Whereas previously expensive equipment and special skills were required to build VR apps, now the development of virtual reality has become available due to intuitive tools and frameworks.
You don’t have to write programs from scratch to create your own virtual reality applications, you just can use special platforms to facilitate this process.
Despite being a relatively new industry, the virtual reality market is booming across the globe, which allows gamers to experience different worlds with the use of a VR headset. Besides, VR games’ global revenue is forecast to grow from 0.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2017 to 2.4 billion U.S. dollars by 2024.
So, check these frameworks as the basis of your design to save your time and effort when creating an exciting VR game.
Unreal Engine 4
Unreal Engine 4 is ideal for those looking for a complete toolkit for creating games, simulations, and real-time visualizations. Unreal has everything you need for designers, artists, and programmers, and all the source code is open, so any part can be customized for the project. This makes the system more flexible. Due to its openness, the UE has a large community and the fixes of bugs found by the community itself quickly get into official updates.
Another advantage of Unreal Engine is the multiplayer game out of the box. In fact, after starting the editor in a few clicks, you can create a project that already has a network game. With the rise of multiplayer games and the stakes of large companies on online multiplayer modes, this is a significant advantage that, for example, Unity does not have.
Unity 3D
Developing games with Unity is one of the most relevant today, as it is a free and powerful tool for an experienced game designer.
The Unity3D engine provides the ability to develop game programs without special knowledge. In this environment, a component-oriented approach is used, with its help the game developer can create an object, for example, the main character. In addition, you can easily add different elements such as an image of the main character and methods of control over him or her.
Besides, one of the indisputable advantages of UNITY3D lies in the fact that it is equipped with a large library of assets and plugins that can significantly speed up the development of a game program. The programmer can import and export them, embed ready-made blanks – levels, heroes, enemies. Some assets can be obtained for free, some can be purchased for quite symbolic prices.
The development of games with augmented reality is carried out on Unity with the same quality as the “classic” ones, and every customer is very pleased with the result.
CryEngine
CryEngine is another powerful game engine that makes it possible to generate almost photorealistic graphics! Imagine how great it will look with modern virtual reality technologies! With the proper skill, projects developed with its help are superior in picture quality to any games on Unreal Engine 4 or Unity. In addition, the engine contains a functional real-time renderer that allows you to quickly experience the level or scene you just created.
React 360
Oculus has released an updated and redesigned version of React VR, an open-source JS library for building cross-platform VR apps. This update includes:
- improved 2D support – it is now much easier to create 2D interfaces in 3D space because the framework allows developers to add 2D interfaces on surfaces that are optimized for clarity and ease of layout.
- improved media support – new environment features to better handle immersive media, including support for monoscopic and stereoscopic VR180 video, inline transitions, and faster loading times;
- improved performance – Developers can take advantage of improved playback performance, especially on lower-end mobile devices, due to significant architecture changes across runtime.
Amazon Sumerian
Amazon Sumerian makes it quick and easy to create VR, AR, and 3D apps, even for those with no prior experience. It is compatible with Oculus Rift, Oculus Go, HTC Vive, Google Daydream, Lenovo Mirage, as well as Android and iOS mobile devices. You can create an account for free, then the fee is charged based on the volume of stored 3D resources and traffic generated by scenes.
Godot
Godot Engine is a feature-rich, cross-platform game engine for creating 2D and 3D games. It provides a rich set of common tools so that users can focus on making games without having to reinvent the wheel. Games can be exported with one click to a range of platforms, including major desktop platforms (Linux, macOS, Windows), as well as mobile (Android, IOS) and web-based platforms (HTML5).
The general architecture of the engine is built around the concept of a tree of inherited “scenes”. Each element of the scene (node) can become a full-fledged scene at any moment. Therefore, during development, you can easily change the entire architecture of the project, expand its elements in any direction and work with complex scenes at the level of simple abstractions.
Godot is completely free and open-source under the MIT license. Godot development is completely independent and community-driven, enabling users to create their own tools to meet their expectations.
A-Frame
A-Frame is a web framework that allows you to create various applications, games, scenes in virtual reality (VR). Visually, it looks like a web page, which in essence is a three-dimensional image that you can navigate and interact with. Since technically everything is rendered using WebGL, the main goal of the framework is to provide developers with a simple tool that would allow them to create a 3D web in a familiar, very similar to HTML markup, way.
Simmetri
Simmetri is the only interactive learning platform that teaches people with no programming experience to create high-quality VR / AR applications. Using this engine, you can create VR projects, animations, games, interactive artwork, physics experiments, and much more. The framework uses a fully interactive in-app learning system that guides you through the app in a playful way and gives you a set of options to create a huge array of XR capabilities.
So, the main feature of virtual reality games is the player’s full immersion in the game world, and these frameworks will allow you to create a game that will move the player’s involvement moves to a completely different level compared to ordinary games.
