Stuff that need to be logged

There were a few things that I did that are not really relevant for the project anymore as we have changed the our deliverable. However to keep a record of this I just want to mention it over here.

Video deliverable

originally we were to have a video presentation that would be a separate entity which we will present to those who are waiting to use the oculus rift. Basically it will be a presentation that will run in the background on a screen to viewers. We were going to do thing on unity and i was working on the code for the camera. There were some ideas of making it flexible and changeable by the presenters (the astronautics department). Also we talked about making it intractable. However in the end as a group we decided to simply go with video without any intractability. Though none of the work I did regarding that will become useful, I figured should have a record of that.

Alternative technology to unity

In the beginning, before we as a group decided to go with unity as the technology software to use with the oculus rift, there was a discussion on any alternatives. As I was a little bit more familiar  with the Unreal Engine I suggested that I will look into it. I looked in to the unity engine using oculus rift and compared it unreal engine using oculus rift. The summary of my comparison is as follows, Unity and Unreal have many similarities in the setup of the oculus camera within the engine. The oculus wrapper code is provided in the in the OculusVR website where we will download the  unity4 integration wrapper and migrate it into unity and drop the oculus camera into the view port for use. Similarly the unreal engine developers have a similar wrapper for download. 

1. In comparing the two I found that Unreal had a few more options in versatility and usability. However these benefits truly com into play in a first person simulation type scenario. Since our project is using a camera attached to a pace probe many of the functions in Unreal that already exists may not be useful. Though the coding aspect of Unreal is relatively simpler than Unity with regards to using oculus rift. 

2. Unreal4 is a new engine released recently and has not been tested extensively. In addition the help we can expect to receive through forums is also limited due to the same reason. As a result my confidence in Unity is better.

3. I guess the most important factor was the price point. Though Unreal engine was not an expensive engine at $19 a month for full access, unity is free.

As a group we decided to go with unity for the price reasons and that many of the members in the group are familiar with unity.