19 Best Books on Virtual Reality

As virtual reality approaches mainstream consumer use, a vibrant development ecosystem has emerged in the past few years. This hands-on guide takes you through VR development essentials for desktop, mobile, and browser-based applications. You’ll explore the three go-to platforms—OculusVR, Gear VR, and Cardboard VR—as well as several VR development environments, programming tools, and techniques.

If you’re an experienced programmer familiar with mobile development, this book will help you gain a working knowledge of VR development through clear and simple examples. Once you create a complete application in the final chapter, you’ll have a jumpstart on the next major entertainment medium.

• Learn VR basics for UI design, 3D graphics, and stereo rendering
• Explore Unity3D, the current development choice among game engines
• Create native applications for desktop computers with the Oculus Rift
• Develop mobile applications for Samsung’s Gear VR with the Android and Oculus Mobile SDKs
• Build browser-based applications with the WebVR Javascript API and WebGL
• Create simple and affordable mobile apps for any smartphone with Google’s Cardboard VR
• Bring everything together to build a 360-degree panoramic photo viewer

Virtual reality is able to effectively blur the line between reality and illusion, granting us access to any experience imaginable. These experiences, ones that the brain is convinced are real, will soon be available everywhere. In Experience on Demand, Jeremy Bailenson draws upon two decades spent researching the psychological effects of VR to help readers understand its upsides and possible downsides. He offers expert guidelines for interacting with VR and describes the profound ways this technology can be put to use to hone our performance, help us recover from trauma, improve our learning, and even enhance our empathic and imaginative capacities so that we treat others and ourselves better.

Brennan Spiegel has spent years studying the medical power of the mind, and in VRx he reveals a revolutionary new kind of care: virtual medicine. It offers the possibility of treating illnesses without solely relying on intrusive surgeries or addictive opioids.

Despite popular forays into augmented and virtual reality in recent years, spatial computing still sits on the cusp of mainstream use. Developers, artists, and designers looking to enter this field today have few places to turn for expert guidance. In this book, Erin Pangilinan, Steve Lukas, and Vasanth Mohan examine the AR and VR development pipeline and provide hands-on practice to help you hone your skills.

Through step-by-step tutorials, you’ll learn how to build practical applications and experiences grounded in theory and backed by industry use cases. In each section of the book, industry specialists, including Timoni West, Victor Prisacariu, and Nicolas Meuleau, join the authors to explain the technology behind spatial computing.

In three parts, this book covers:

• Art and design: Explore spatial computing and design interactions, human-centered interaction, and sensory design, and content creation tools for digital art
• Technical development: Examine differences between ARKit, ARCore, and spatial mapping-based systems; learn approaches to cross-platform development on head-mounted displays
• Use cases: Learn how data and machine learning visualization and AI work in spatial computing, training, sports, health, and other enterprise applications

Virtual Reality in Curriculum and Pedagogy explores the instructional, ethical, practical, and technical issues related to the integration of immersive virtual reality (VR) in school classrooms. The book’s original pedagogical framework is informed by qualitative and quantitative data collected from the first-ever study to embed immersive VR in secondary school science, ICT, and drama classrooms. Students and scholars of technology-enhancing learning, curriculum design, and teacher education alike will find key pedagogical insights into leveraging the unique properties of VR for authentic, metacognitive, and creative learning.

In the year 2045, the reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days.

When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself. 

Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he’s beset by rivals who’ll kill to take this prize. The race is on—and the only way to survive is to win.

Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison—a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age.

In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse, he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about the apocalypse.

Ten years from today, the center of our digital lives will no longer be the smart phone, but a device that looks like ordinary eyeglasses: except those glasses will have settings for Virtual and Augmented Reality. What you really see and what is computer-generated will be mixed so tightly together, that we won’t really be able to tell what is real and what is an illusion.

Instead of touching and sliding on a mobile phone, we will make things happen by moving our eyes or by brainwaves. When we talk with someone or play an online game, we will see that person in the same room with us. We will be able to touch and feel her or him through haptic technology.

We won’t need to search online with words, because there will be a new Visual Web 100 times larger than the current Internet, and we will find things by images, buy things by brands, or just by looking at a logo on the jacket of a passerby. The language will be irrelevant, and a merchant in a developing world will have access to global markets.

Medical devices will cure schizophrenia, allow quadriplegics to walk. People will be able to touch and feel objects and other people who are not actually there for conversations, games, and perhaps intimate experiences.

From Kindergarten to on-the-job, learning will become experiential. Children will visit great battlefields and tour historic places in VR rather than read about them in textbooks. Med students and surgeons will learn and practice on virtual humans rather than cadavers; oil rig workers will understand how to handle emergencies before they ever leave the home office.

The Fourth Transformation is based on two years of research and about 400 interviews with technologists and business decision-makers. It explains the technology and product landscape on a level designed to be interesting and useful to business thinkers and general audiences. Mostly it talks about how VR and AR are already being used or will be used in the next one-to-three years. It explains how this massive and fundamental transformation will be driven, not just by Millennials, but by the generation following them, which the authors have named the Minecraft Generation.

Robert Scoble and Shel Israel have written this book in the hope that it will serve as a business thinker’s guidebook to the near-term future. They hope readers will walk away understanding the massive changes rapidly arising so that they will navigate a successful course through the changes they will be facing sooner than they—or their competitors– may realize just yet.

New York Times bestselling authors Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller imagine a world in which you can leave your body behind and give in to your greatest desires in the first book in a fast-paced trilogy perfect for fans of the hit HBO show Westworld and anyone interested in the terrifying possibilities of the future of technology.

That’s how Otherworld traps you. It introduces you to sensations you’d never be able to feel in real life. You discover what’s been missing—because it’s taboo or illegal or because you lack the guts to do it for real. And when you find out what’s missing, it’s almost impossible to let it go again.

There are no screens. There are no controls. You don’t just see and hear it—you taste, smell, and touch it too. In this new reality, there are no laws to break or rules to obey. You can live your best life. Indulge every desire.

This is Otherworld—a virtual reality game so addictive you’ll never want it to end. And Simon has just discovered that for some, it might not.

The frightening future that Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller have imagined is not far away. Otherworld asks the question we’ll all soon be asking: if technology can deliver everything we want, how much are we willing to pay?

A comprehensive overview of developments in augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality—and how they could affect every part of our lives.

After years of hype, extended reality—augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR)—has entered the mainstream. Commercially available, relatively inexpensive VR headsets transport wearers to other realities—fantasy worlds, faraway countries, sporting events—in ways that even the most ultra-high-definition screen cannot. AR glasses receive data in visual and auditory forms that are more useful than any laptop or smartphone can deliver. Immersive MR environments blend physical and virtual reality to create a new reality. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, technology writer Samuel Greengard offers an accessible overview of developments in extended reality, explaining the technology, considering the social and psychological ramifications, and discussing possible future directions.

Greengard describes the history and technological development of augmented and virtual realities, including the latest research in the field, and surveys the various shapes and forms of VR, AR, and MR, including head-mounted displays, mobile systems, and goggles. He examines the way these technologies are shaping and reshaping some professions and industries and explores how extended reality affects psychology, morality, law, and social constructs. It’s not a question of whether extended reality will become a standard part of our world, he argues, but how, when, and where these technologies will take hold. Did will extend reality help create a better world? Will it benefit society as a whole? Or will it merely provide financial windfalls for a select few? Greengard’s account equips us to ask the right questions about a transformative technology.

A compelling and insightful look at the future of Spatial Computing, and how this cutting-edge technology is changing the way we do business across seven primary industries, and what it means for humanity as a whole.

• Discover how Spatial Computing is changing the face of technology
• Get a roadmap for the disruptions caused by Spatial Computing and how it will affect seven major industries
• Gain insights about the past, present, and future of technology from the world’s leading experts and innovators

Book Description

What is Spatial Computing and why is everyone from Tesla, Apple, and Facebook investing heavily in it?

In The Infinite Retina, authors Irena Cronin and Robert Scoble attempt to answer that question by helping you understand where Spatial Computing-an augmented reality where humans and machines can interact in a physical space-came from, where it’s going, and why it’s so fundamentally different from the computers or mobile phones that came before.

They present seven visions of the future and the industry verticals in which Spatial Computing has the most influence-Transportation; Technology, Media, and Telecommunications; Manufacturing; Retail; Healthcare; Finance; and Education.

The book also shares insights about the past, present, and future from leading experts and other industry veterans and innovators, including Sebastian Thrun, Ken Bretschneider, and Hugo Swart. They dive into what they think will happen in Spatial Computing in the near and medium-term and also explore what it could mean for humanity in the long term.

The Infinite Retina then leaves it up to you to decide whether Spatial Computing is truly where the future of technology is heading or whether it’s just an exciting, but passing, phase.

What you will learn

• Look back at historical paradigms that changed the face of technology
• Consider how Spatial Computing could be the new technology that changes our lives
• See how Virtual and Augmented Reality will change the way we do healthcare
• Learn how Spatial Computing technology will lead to fully automated transportation
• Think about how Spatial Computing will change the manufacturing industry
• Explore how finance and retail are going to be impacted through Spatial Computing devices
• Hear accounts from industry experts on what they expect Spatial Computing to bring to their sectors

Who this book is for

The Infinite Retina is for anyone interested in the future of technology and how Augmented Reality and Spatial Computing (among other developments) will affect both businesses and the individual.

Join these veteran cine-VR storytellers as they break down fundamental concepts from traditional media to demonstrate how cine-VR can connect with audiences in new ways. Examples from their professional work are provided to illustrate basic, intermediate, and advanced approaches to crafting a modern story in this unique narrative space where there’s no screen to contain an image and no specific stage upon which to perform.

Virtual Reality Cinema will prepare you to approach your own cine-VR projects via:

• • Tips and techniques for writing, directing, and producing bleeding-edge narrative cine-VR projects;

• • More than a hundred photos and illustrations to explain complex concepts;

• • Access to more than two hours of on-line cine-VR examples that you can download to watch on your own HMD;

• • New techniques developed at Ohio University’s Game Research and Immersive Design (GRID) Lab, including how to work with actors to embrace Gravity and avoid the Persona Gap, how to develop stories with the Story Engagement Matrix, and how to balance directorial control and audience agency in this new medium.

This book is an absolute must-read for any student of filmmaking, media production, transmedia storytelling, and game design, as well as anyone already working in these industries that wants to understand the new challenges and opportunities of virtual reality cinema.

Explore the latest features of Unity and build VR experiences including first-person interactions, audio fireball games, 360-degree media, art gallery tours, and VR storytelling.

• Discover step-by-step instructions and best practices to begin your VR development journey
• Explore Unity features such as URP rendering, XR Interaction Toolkit, and ProBuilder
• Build impressive VR-based apps and games that can be experienced using modern devices like Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest

This third edition of the Unity Virtual Reality (VR) development guide is updated to cover the latest features of Unity 2019.4 or later versions – the leading platform for building VR games, applications, and immersive experiences for contemporary VR devices.

Enhanced with more focus on growing components, such as Universal Render Pipeline (URP), extended reality (XR) plugins, the XR Interaction Toolkit package, and the latest VR devices, this edition will help you to get up to date with the current state of VR. With its practical and project-based approach, this book covers the specifics of virtual reality development in Unity. You’ll learn how to build VR apps that can be experienced with modern devices from Oculus, VIVE, and others. This virtual reality book presents lighting and rendering strategies to help you build cutting-edge graphics, and explains URP and rendering concepts that will enable you to achieve realism for your apps. You’ll build real-world VR experiences using world space user interface canvases, locomotion and teleportation, 360-degree media, and timeline animation, as well as learn about important VR development concepts, best practices, and performance optimization, and user experience strategies.

By the end of this Unity book, you’ll be fully equipped to use Unity to develop rich, interactive virtual reality experiences.

What you will learn

• Understand the current state of virtual reality and VR consumer products
• Get started with Unity by building a simple diorama scene using Unity Editor and imported assets
• Configure your Unity VR projects to run on VR platforms such as Oculus, SteamVR, and Windows immersive MR
• Design and build a VR storytelling animation with a soundtrack and timelines
• Implement an audio fireball game using game physics and particle systems
• Use various software patterns to design Unity events and interactable components
• Discover best practices for lighting, rendering, and post-processing

Whether you’re a non-programmer unfamiliar with 3D computer graphics or experienced in both but new to virtual reality, if you’re interested in building your own VR games or applications, this Unity book is for you. Any experience in Unity will be useful but is not necessary.

Transform teaching and learning with AR and VR in your classroom.

We’re at the dawn of an incredible transformation in education. Augmented reality and virtual reality–technologies that were once the province of science fiction and fantasy–are faster, better, and more affordable than ever. These tools have the potential to not only inspire students but to redefine how we teach and collaborate. But widespread adoption of AR and VR in K-12 classrooms requires taking risks, investing money and time, and training educators.

Reality Bytes makes the case for taking this leap by showing how educators are using these amazing technologies, and it provides a powerful framework to help anyone, in any school, join them. The innovative educators profiled are already designing learning experiences using AR and VR that supercharge student motivation, encourage creativity, and make otherwise impossible educational adventures accessible to all. You can do the same, using easy-to-implement resources that will revolutionize how you approach instruction. Equip your students with the skills they’ll need in the future–today.

Reality Bytes opens the doors to tools for meeting every student no matter where they are. This book outlines the power that AR and VR have in building empathy and growing critical worldviews and perspectives. Christine, Jesse, and Micah cast an exciting vision for the future of education!

Storytelling for Virtual Reality serves as a bridge between students of new media and professionals working between the emerging world of VR technology and the art form of classical storytelling. Rather than examining purely the technical, the text focuses on the narrative and how stories can best be structured, created, and then told in virtual immersive spaces. Author John Bucher examines the timeless principles of storytelling and how they are being applied, transformed, and transcended in Virtual Reality. Interviews, conversations, and case studies with both pioneers and innovators in VR storytelling are featured, including industry leaders at LucasFilm, 20th Century Fox, Oculus, Insomniac Games, and Google.

The dramatic, larger-than-life true story behind the founding of Oculus and its quest for virtual reality, by the bestselling author of Console Wars. Drawing on over a hundred interviews with the key players driving this revolution, The History of the Future weaves together a rich, cinematic narrative that captures the breakthroughs, breakdowns, and human drama of trying to change the world. The result is a super accessible and supremely entertaining look at the birth of a game-changing new industry.

From iconic books like Neuromancer to blockbuster films like The Matrix, virtual reality has long been hailed as the ultimate technology. But outside of a few research labs and military training facilities, this tantalizing vision of the future was nothing but science fiction. Until 2012, when Oculus founder Palmer Luckey—then just a rebellious teenage dreamer living alone in a camper trailer—invents a device that has the potential to change everything.

With the help of a videogame legend, a serial entrepreneur and many other colorful characters, Luckey’s scrappy startup kickstarts a revolution and sets out to bring VR to the masses. As with most underdog stories, things don’t quite go according to plan. But what happens next turns out to be the ultimate entrepreneurial journey: a tale of battles won and lost, lessons learned and neverending twists and turns—including an unlikely multi-billion-dollar acquisition by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, which shakes up the landscape in Silicon Valley and gives Oculus the chance to forever change our reality.

Drawing on over a hundred interviews with the key players driving this revolution, The History of the Future weaves together a rich, cinematic narrative that captures the breakthroughs, breakdowns, and human drama of trying to change the world. The result is a super accessible and supremely entertaining look at the birth of a game-changing new industry.

A Wired senior editor and virtual reality expert present a captivating, candid glimpse into the future “realities” of this emerging technology: how we will use it to form previously impossible relationships, explore new frontiers of intimacy, and how it will forever change human connection.

Heralded as the most significant technological innovation since the smartphone, virtual reality is poised to transform our very notions of life and humanity. Though this tech is still in its infancy, to those on the inside, it is the future. VR will change how we work, how we experience entertainment, how we feel pleasure and other emotions, how we see ourselves, and most importantly, how we relate to each other in the real world. And we will never be the same.

Peter Rubin, the senior culture editor for Wired and the industry’s go-to authority on the subject, calls it an “intimacy engine.” While once we needed another person to feel the sensations of closeness, trust, vulnerability, confidence, and titillation, VR will give us the ability to induce these sensations by ourselves for the first time in human history. This metamorphosis, Rubin argues, is going to have a powerful impact on relationships that will ripple throughout our society and our individual lives.

A journey into this uncertain future and a glimpse at the cultural implications and promises of a new reality, Future Presence explores a host of complex questions about what makes us human, what connects us, and what is real. Offering a glimpse into the mind-blowing things happening in universities, labs, and tech companies around the world, Rubin leads readers on an entertaining tour of the weirdest, wildest corners of this fascinating new universe. Describing this book as “half travelogue and half crystal ball”, Rubin will:

• Introduce readers to the creators and consumers of VR technology
• Show readers what an experience is like inside the current VR devices
• Explain how this technology will upend everything we know about human connection in the future

At once the incredible, inevitable story of virtual reality’s rise and a look towards the future of our fantasies, Future Presence is a deeply personal examination of what connects us, and an analysis of what relationships, empathy, and sex could look like—sooner than we think.