Quick start with INTERACT

Target audience: XR, Software developers, Technical Educators

Prerequisites

To use the Enabler INTERACT, you must have:

• A VR-ready computer (appropriate graphics card: see INTERACT FAQ)
• Latest version of SteamVR installed (minimum recommended version 2.1)
• Unity version 2022.3 LTS or Unity 6 LTS (minimum and recommended) installed with a valid Unity Pro license

See more details within the INTERACT documentation.

Create a Project with INTERACT

The following step-by-step is using Unity 2022.3.19f1 and Unity Hub 3.8.0 for illustration purposes. Using newer versions of Unity should look similar.

With Unity Hub

When using Unity Hub you can create a new INTERACT project easily by creating a new project and selecting the INTERACT template.

1. In Unity Hub, click on New project
2. Select the INTERACT Template
3. Click on Create project

Activate your License (if not done already)

In Unity, open the INTERACT embedded license manager by clicking the INTERACT > License Manager menu item.

If your license is already activated and valid, you will see the information of your license (such as end of validity date). Otherwise, you will see a page inviting you to select the type of license you want to activate.

In case of any issue with licensing, please contact us at interact-support@ls-group.fr

Use INTERACT from an existing Unity project

You can also use INTERACT on an existing Unity project, by importing manually INTERACT unitypackage.

Creating a new simulation

The first thing to do when creating a new simulation is:

Make sure that you start from an empty Unity scene (File/New scene) In the INTERACT menu, click on "Create New Simulation" You can choose between two preconfigured environments (White Lab or Factory).

Select your setup (Display Device, Hand Tracking, Body Tracking). In this step, you can configure your hardware combination for any VR experience.

Now look at the 'Hierarchy' tab, 3 objects have been created:

• [PhysicsManager] is the object managing the physics simulation (linked with the physics server). Its properties should not be modified unless you are an advanced user.
• [Player_1] is the object managing the VR camera and controllers, the hand tracking device and the avatar. You can modify its position in the scene (your initial position in VR when the simulation is launched) by clicking on it and changing its coordinates (position and rotation) in the 'Inspector' tab.
• WhiteLab is the default environment. You can delete it if you want to replace it with an environment of your own.

Using desktop player

If you don't have a VR device, you can use desktop player in order to visualize your scene. After selecting the desktop player on "Add player" menu, you can customize the desktop camera commands to match the movements of popular CAD software (CATIA, Solidworks, Sketchup).

Go to the camera controller component (below) and here you can choose: - CATIA - Solidworks - Sketchup - Unity

You can move grabbable objects like in VR by using the left click button. Your gameobject need to have an Unity Mesh Collider in order to be detected by the desktop manipulator tool.

Playing the simulation

INTERACT allows to quickly switch from your working session to the VR simulation. To do so :

In the Unity toolbar, click on the Play button

Put on your headset, you should now visualize the environment at scale 1:1. Now you can enjoy discovering the powerful features within INTERACT!

Check our documentation for more details.