Virtual Tolkien

March 27, 2019

We recently rewatched the Lord of the Rings films and each time the fellowship sails past the giant statues I always wished I could do the same. Now you too can slip past the watchful eye of Sauron, in the shadow of Mount Doom and sail past the Argonaths and all their majesty. This is a 5 minute VR experience.

There is an option to have background music, you can place a MP3 in the folder called "Music" within the "Virtual Tolkien_Data" folder. I suggest

Howard Shore - The Road Goes Ever On. Part 1

This experience is designed for use with the Oculus Rift. Because of numerous requests for Quest, Index, Vive and Windows Mixed Reality devices, I will look into releasing versions that support these devices. If you wish to test this experience on your device, contact me and I will let you know when a version is available. Note: WMR has been removed as of July 28 because of some render issues. I will get back to that.

Thanks to an article on UploadVR there has been additional interest in this project. Thank you all very much for the great feedback. I have spent the past week fixing those issue and adding new features. If you have any additional thoughts or issues please feel free to contact me; blissgig@gmail.com

Download "Virtual Tolkien" for Oculus Rift - July 31, 2020 (925 MB)

Download "Virtual Tolkien" for Oculus Quest* - Nov 1, 2020 (760 MB)

* You will need to sideload the Quest version. For details on how to sideload applications to your Quest, visit SidequestVR

Additionally since this is getting traction, it should be stated that I am a business developer, not a designer. Credit to much of what you experience in this application is due to artists and designers. I have always looked at software development as creating with LEGOS; Purchase the pieces you need and put them together in the manner you want. I will update this page with a list of the assets I used.

Some of the assets I used for this experience:

There are a number of additional assets that I have used, these are the primary items. When I get time I may go through and list them all.

Technologies: Unity3d, Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest, VR, C#