Virtual Reality Games: Extending Unity Learn Games to VR

TL;DR

This paper introduces two open-source VR games built from Unity Learn projects, aiming to facilitate research by providing accessible, beginner-friendly VR game templates for academic studies.

Contribution

It presents two source-available VR games derived from Unity Learn, filling a gap for research-friendly, easy-to-use VR game resources.

Findings

Games are easy to adapt for research purposes

They are suitable for beginner researchers

Open-source nature promotes wider research use

Abstract

Research involving virtual reality (VR) has dramatically increased since the introduction of consumer VR systems. In turn, research on VR games has gained popularity within several fields. However, most VR games are closed source, which limits research opportunities. Some VR games are open source, but most of them are either very basic or too complex to be easily used in research. In this paper, we present two source-available VR games developed from freely available Unity Learn games: a kart racing game and a 3D adventure game. Our hope is that other researchers find them easy to use for VR studies, as Unity Technologies developed the games for beginners and has provided tutorials on using them.