Introduction

ViRSE is a newly developed software platform at Imperial College London, designed to facilitate the development and deployment of multi-user, virtual reality learning applications. ViRSE is fast gaining momentum within Imperial, and those who know how to use it are increasingly in demand!

Throughout this course, you will learn how to use ViRSE’s unity-based development tools to create a multiplayer VR game. You will learn VR design principles, networking principles, and reinforce previous knowledge with the Unity engine.

When you’ve completed this course you will be in a good position to start making your own multiplayer applications with ViRSE, either in VR or using traditional mouse & keyboard controls.

<aside> 💡 ViRSE uses Unity at its core, so it’s also essential to have an understanding of Unity to develop applications in ViRSE. If you are unfamiliar with Unity, you can take our Introduction to Unity 3D Course

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Pre-requisites

ViRSE acts like an expansion to Unity, so familiarity with the Unity engine is required. Programming is done with the C# programming language, so experience with this (or with another object oriented language) is essential.

Before starting the course, you'll need to install Unity 2022.3.24, GitHub Desktop and the ViRSE training repo. See the Installations and Setup page for help.

How to take this course

If you're based at Imperial College London, register with the Graduate school to take advantage of in-person lessons, and gain a course credit for taking this course. Visit the Graduate School Introduction to ViRSE for Virtual Reality page to register now.

Otherwise, it's possible to take this course fully online using the resources available in these docs. Just keep reading!

<aside> 💬 We have a Discord server! You can use this for any questions about the course (content, exercises, course logistics, etc) or to talk about Unity/ViRSE in general! You can also contact the course lead through email - [email protected]

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Course Outline

This course will consist of six lessons, each of which will take up to 2 hours to complete. Teaching will be delivered primarily through videos, although written reference material will also be provided along with the exercises. When you’ve read through this page and are happy that you have the pre-requisites, click on Lesson One to get started

Lesson One - Scene Setup, Activatables, & Adjustables

Lesson Two - Advanced Activatables & FreeGrabbables

Lesson Three - Advanced Adjustables, UIs, & Multiplayer Testing