Gaze-Based Control

Right now, our diorama is a third-person virtual reality experience. When you go into it, you're like an observer or a third-person camera. Sure, you can look around and add controls that let you move the camera's viewpoint. However, any action in the scene is from a third-person perspective.

In this chapter, we'll pretty much stay in the third-person mode, but we'll get a little more personally involved. We will explore techniques that can be used to control objects in your virtual world by looking and staring. Our character, Ethan, will be under your control, responding to where you look. Furthermore, we'll start programming the Unity scripts. Along the way, we will discuss the following topics:

• Adding AI (short for artificial intelligence) and NavMesh to our third-person character, Ethan
• Unity programming in C#
• Using our gaze to move a 3D cursor
• Shooting and killing Ethan, the zombie, to good effect

Most intros to Unity development tip-toe you through the easy stuff and maybe never even get to the more interesting, although more complex, things. We're going to mix things up in this chapter, throwing you into a few different 3D graphics topics, some a little advanced. If it's new to you, think of this as a survey tutorial. Nonetheless, we go through it step by step so you should be able to follow along and have a lot of fun too!