| title | description | author | ms.author | ms.date | ms.topic | keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Configure a New Unity Project for Windows Mixed Reality |
configure Unity project without MRTK |
yoyoz |
Yoyoz |
04/15/2018 |
article |
Unity, mixed reality, development, getting started, new project |
(skip if you have already imported MRTK v2 into your Unity Project)
If you'd like to created a new Unity project without importing Mixed Reality Toolkit, there are a small set of Unity settings you'll need to manually change for Windows Mixed Reality, broken down into two categories: per-project and per-scene.
To target Windows Mixed Reality, you first need to set your Unity project to export as a Universal Windows Platform app:
- Select File > Build Settings...
- Select Universal Windows Platform in the Platform list and click Switch Platform
- Set SDK to Universal 10
- Set Target device to Any Device to support immersive headsets or switch to HoloLens
- Set Build Type to D3D
- Set UWP SDK to Latest installed
We then need to let Unity know that the app we are trying to export should create an immersive view instead of a 2D view. We do that by enabling "Virtual Reality Supported":
- From the Build Settings... window, open Player Settings...
- Select the Settings for Universal Windows Platform tab
- Expand the XR Settings group
- In the XR Settings section, check the Virtual Reality Supported checkbox to add the Virtual Reality Devices list.
- In the XR Settings group, confirm that "Windows Mixed Reality" is listed as a supported device. (this may appear as "Windows Holographic" in older versions of Unity)
Unity xr settings
Your app can now do basic holographic rendering and spatial input. To go further and take advantage of certain functionality, your app must declare the appropriate capabilities in its manifest. The manifest declarations can be made in Unity so they are included in every subsequent project export. The setting are found in Player Settings > Settings for Universal Windows Platform > Publishing Settings > Capabilities. The applicable capabilities for enabling commonly-used Unity APIs for Mixed Reality are:
| Capability | APIs requiring capability |
|---|---|
| SpatialPerception | SurfaceObserver (access to spatial mapping meshes on HoloLens)—No capability needed for general spatial tracking of the headset |
| WebCam | PhotoCapture and VideoCapture |
| PicturesLibrary / VideosLibrary | PhotoCapture or VideoCapture, respectively (when storing the captured content) |
| Microphone | VideoCapture (when capturing audio), DictationRecognizer, GrammarRecognizer, and KeywordRecognizer |
| InternetClient | DictationRecognizer (and to use the Unity Profiler) |
Unity quality settings
Unity quality settings
HoloLens has a mobile-class GPU. If your app is targeting HoloLens, you'll want the quality settings tuned for fastest performance to ensure we maintain full framerate:
- Select Edit > Project Settings > Quality
- Select the dropdown under the Windows Store logo and select Very Low. You'll know the setting is applied correctly when the box in the Windows Store column and Very Low row is green.
Unity camera settings
Unity camera settings
Once you enable the "Virtual Reality Supported" checkbox, the Unity Camera component handles head tracking and stereoscopic rendering. There is no need to replace it with a custom camera to do this.
If your app is targeting HoloLens specifically, there are a few settings that need to be changed to optimize for the device's transparent displays, so your app will show through to the physical world:
- In the Hierarchy, select the Main Camera
- In the Inspector panel, set the transform position to 0, 0, 0 so the location of the users head starts at the Unity world origin.
- Change Clear Flags to Solid Color.
- Change the Background color to RGBA 0,0,0,0. Black renders as transparent in HoloLens.
- Change Clipping Planes - Near to the HoloLens recommended 0.85 (meters).
If you delete and create a new camera, make sure your camera is Tagged as MainCamera.