VIRTUAL REALITY

The book is growing out of material for an overwhelmingly popular undergraduate course on VR that I introduced at the University of Illinois in 2015 (with hardware support from Oculus/Facebook). I have never in my life seen students so excited to take a course. We cannot offer enough slots to come even close to meeting the demand. T herefore, the primary target of this book is undergraduate students around the world. This book would be an ideal source for starting similar VR courses at other universities. Although most of the interested students have been computer scientists, the course at Illinois has attracted students from many disciplines, such as psychology, music, kinesiology, engineering, medicine, and economics. Students in these other fields come with the most exciting project ideas because they can see how VR has the potential to radically alter their discipline. To make the course accessible to students with such diverse backgrounds, I have made the material as self-contained as possible. There is no assumed background in software development or advanced mathematics. If prospective readers have at least written some scripts before and can remember how to multiply matrices together, they should be ready to go. In addition to use by students who are studying VR in university courses, it is also targeted at developers in industry, hobbyists on the forums, and researchers in academia. The book appears online so that it may serve as a convenient references for all of these groups. To provide further assistance, there are also accompanying materials online, including lecture slides (prepared by Anna Yershova) and recorded lectures (provided online for free by NPTEL of India). herefore, the primary target of this book is undergraduate students around the world. This book would be an ideal source for starting similar VR courses at other universities. Although most of the interested students have been computer scientists, the course at Illinois has attracted students from many disciplines, such as psychology, music, kinesiology, engineering, medicine, and economics. Students in these other fields come with the most exciting project ideas because they can see how VR has the potential to radically alter their discipline. To make the course accessible to students with such diverse backgrounds, I have made the material as self-contained as possible. There is no assumed background in software development or advanced mathematics. If prospective readers have at least written some scripts before and can remember how to multiply matrices together, they should be ready to go. In addition to use by students who are studying VR in university courses, it is also targeted at developers in industry, hobbyists on the forums, and researchers in academia. The book appears online so that it may serve as a convenient references for all of these groups. To provide further assistance, there are also accompanying materials online, including lecture slides (prepared by Anna Yershova) and recorded lectures (provided online for free by NPTEL of India).