Essential Components of a VR Environment

In our physical world, we use actual objects to construct an environment. When someone says classroom, for example, our eyes might immediately wander around the room, looking for a board, projector, classroom desks, and an instructor. Similarly, if we’re to create a virtual classroom environment, it must have the required components. In this lesson, we’ll cover the essential components needed to build an interactive virtual environment.

Virtual environment (assets)

The virtual environment, like any other real environment, requires assets. For example, we’ll need classroom-specific assets to build a classroom. Similarly, assets such as moon craters and a virtual space depicting the universe will be required to replicate lunar flight. So, where do we get these assets from? Unity and Unreal Engine are the most popular development platforms, and both of them have their online asset stores that offer free and paid assets.

Other popular asset stores are Sketchfab, Kenney Assets, OpenGameArt, and more. The following illustration combines a house, grass, sky, well, and cloud assets stitched together via an IDE like Unity 3D or Unreal Engine to create a virtual world depicted below: