Chapter 6. First-person Character

Ninja on Segway illustration by Alaric Holloway, used with permission

Surprisingly, we have gotten this far in a book about VR and are still only using a fixed position third-person camera! This was intentional.

The typical approach when one starts to build a VR application is to immediately place the user directly into the scene as a first-person character. After all, wearing a VR headset is inherently a first-person point of view. However, virtual reality does not always need to be from a first-person perspective. Watching and controlling the action from a third-person point of view, such as a diorama with live actors, is a legitimate approach. In fact, some research indicates that fast-paced action games, which can unavoidably cause motion sickness when played in VR from a first-person point of view, may benefit from a third-person perspective instead.

That said, in this chapter, we will now move ourselves into a controllable first-person character...