Published on
December 12, 2024
We are happy to announce the release of VR Builder 5. You can get the new VR Builder Pro - Toolkit for VR* creation from the asset store for a limited time at 50% off the full price. Best of all, to show our gratitude to all VR Builders who supported us in the past, you are eligible to upgrade to VR Builder Pro for free within the next 90 days.
Unity released version 6 and introduced some great new capabilities for VR developers! We are happy to announce that VR Builder is now fully upgraded to take advantage of these new features and is in line with current XR Industry Standards.
XRI 3.0 brings significant updates, focusing on enhancing navigation and manipulation. By updating VR Builder to support XRI 3, we're ensuring that you have access to the latest tools like the Near-Far Interactor. We've completely rebuilt our XR Rig to support these new interactions, giving you access to new locomotion styles, which you can easily manage by toggling them in the Hierarchy.
We've also made onboarding smoother for new users. By default, VR Builder Objects interact only with the Near Interactor, and we've switched from Hand Models to Controller Models, aligning all controller interactions, such as stick teleportation, with industry standards.
To improve compatibility with XRI, we've aligned our teleportation and interaction layers with the standard layers used by the XRI Samples. The VR Builder interaction and physics layer for teleporting is now named 'Teleport' and is placed on layer 31. Additionally, we've removed all dependencies on XRI Samples, meaning they will no longer be added to your project when adding VR Builder.
Unity has made the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) the new default for VR and many other templates, and we've followed suit for VR Builder. All demo scenes and materials are now built using URP, ensuring that you get the best visual quality and performance.
We consolidated VR Builder Core and all add-ons into VR Builder Pro. This means you get tools for designing complex workflows, animations, randomization, and the Process control Menus as part of VR Builder Pro. This change also reduces complexity, making updates smoother for both you and us.
The previous VR Builder package and all add-ons are now deprecated and are only accessible to users who previously bought them. If you can't use Unity 6 and need a previous version of VR Builder Core you can get it from GitHub. For any of the deprecated add-ons, please contact us.
We added some powerful new features for highlighting and guidance within VR environments to guide your users to points of interest. These enhancements will make your VR training and simulations even more effective and engaging.
And we included a Play Video Behavior. If you want to show a video to the users in VR it's now easier than ever before.
Our mission is to democratize immersive experiences. As part of this commitment, VR Builder Core will continue to be available on GitHub and now also on Open-UPM, ensuring broad access to all users.
In the upcoming releases we will add Hand Tracking support. For the Controller mode, if there is significant demand, we plan to add options for using Hand Models or a hybrid mode that combines both Hands and Controllers.
For more visit our roadmap: https://www.mindport.co/vr-builder/roadmap
We talked with many users and decided against a compatibility between VR Builder 4 and 5. This would have required many additional resources which we prefer to invest in improving VR Builder.
What this means for you:
We are committed to fostering an active and engaged community on GitHub and Discord. Here's how you can get involved:
Join us to make a difference and shape the future of VR Builder together!
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