Unity MARS
Okay, so some pretty crazy stuff is going on here! You definitely have to get excited about this news coming out of Unity (Technologies, Unity3d..the VR/ AR/ XR game engine that isn’t Epic Games (Unreal Engine) or Amazon Web Services’ Sumerian ). So what’s this exciting news I know you’re eagerly awaiting? UNITY MARS. No, this has nothing to do with inhabiting the relatively “tiny” red planet one day years down the line.
Unity MARS allows Unity developers to build interactive and intelligent Augmented Reality applications within the Unity editor. It allows creators the ability to:
- Author complex, data-oriented apps visually
- Test experience without leaving the Unity editor
- Deliver applications with runtime logic that adapt responsively to the real world and work across platforms (build once, deploy anywhere)
But if you’re not sure exactly how to make sense of those bullet points, I’ll try to give you a theoretical example –
For the sake of it, you’re now a teacher in a classroom (pre-Covid) and you want to tangibly show your students the difference between a square and a rectangle. And you’re able to introduce your students to an application you built (you’re a teacher, you’re smart!). And that application provides your students the ability to see many examples of real-world objects. These objects are squares and rectangles popping out in front of them in mid-air (and of course they are wearing a HoloLens 2 for this example). This application was built using Unity Mars and now your application helps provide more contextual detail to what the students are seeing. Think of a square picture frame floating in mid-air. All the while your students are able to read about the picture frame’s specifications – 7 inches in length and 7 inches in width, and a blurb about the picture frame right next to the image. And not some pixelated, clunky picture frame model, we’re talking top of the line picture frame with a cat picture in it (c’mon cats are great) –
Back to Unity MARS! So if that wasn’t enough detail, check out this cool video from Unity themselves about their cutting edge technology.
If you think we’re done talking about Mars, we aren’t!! Back to Unity!
Unity MARS offers developers the ability to describe their Augmented Reality environment and in-game behavior in much simpler terms. Thanks to the new addition of the ‘Rules workflow’. Now describing hierarchies and interactions is much more intuitive. You can now describe how these in-game behaviors and interactions relate to the world around you. This means that creating conditions for scenarios becomes much more modular and reusable. Like having a virtual scenario where you are the developer and you are designing doors on a house. You can now specify a ‘Rule’, a set of conditions that could, for example, place door-handles on each of the doors in your game.
If you’re interested in more information about Unity and Unity MARS, sign up for this webinar where Unity will walk through examples utilizing the tool and simplifying the creative and narrative aspects of development.
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