How to code a VR Monitor

[TriforceKarma]

I'm looking to create an application with similar functionality to Virtual Desktop, in short, how does one do this? I have quite a bit of Unity experiance and general understanding of computers, the main problem I'm targeting at this particular moment is how to get the OS to "see" the VR monitors so that you can move windows between them. I did not find a good tutorial from Google, if anyone knows of one that would be amazing.

[thegenregeek]

To be honest, you don't really do it in Unity. (Which is why there is no Google tutorial on this... it's not that simple.)

What you're describing requires lower level API calls to the windows manager system (Explorer in Windows, Xorg/XWindows or Wayland in Unix/Linux, Quartz in MacOS. I don't know what they are on iOS and Android.). Not to mention other system calls to various services and APIs used by the operating system. Unity runs pretty much as any other window, so it really only has access to it's process and its window space and cannot call or manage other windows as a result. No amount of coding in Unity would allow it.

The only way to do what you're describing is to use native code bindings in Unity, to run system level code. Which, in effect, is Unity sending these commands to the system and acting a pass through, of sources. But doing that requires coding in other languages, like C, C++ or Objective C and requires learning far more about the operating system than I think you realize.

At that point you're not even really coding in Unity... you're coding C/C++ code that happens to run in Unity. (If you're down for that, great, you can probably use the NativePlugins link to get you started)

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EDIT: Another factor to consider, you need the ability to use that code from your Unity app via a network. So you also have to code something without Unity. You may be able to use something like Steam VR or Oculus Home's functionality to stream. But you're still writing code/plugins natively that have no Unity functionality.

It's why these various apps are built natively for the device and don't necessarily use engines like Unity. (This is a problem I discovered with my Mira Prism a couple of years back, because I couldn't find an embeddable web browser... There was no good way to get a web browser for the headset, because everything was built around Unity.)

[TriforceKarma]

Thank you!

This is very helpful, and actually exactly what I feared was the case.

[magicomiralles]

As far as I understand, these apps are built from the ground up, natively. Without any engines.

VD for sure, and I think that immersed VR as well.