Is it possible to push real-world, real-time data into Unity? [closed]

Question

I'm pretty new to this, and I'm having trouble figuring out where to even look. If there's relevant terminology that'll be google-able, that would be a great help.

Suppose I want to have a monitor in-game that displays the output from a camera that's in the same room as the player. Are there libraries for grabbing and rendering that data?

Answer 1

The easiest way would be with render textures, but that is a Pro feature. If you need it for the free version, there might be a good alternative script somewhere. I've been hunting for months and haven't found anything that great. You could try scripting one yourself. If you do, I'm sure many would pay a fair price on the Asset Store so they don't have to buy all of Unity Pro.

Answer 2

What you might want to look at is a method to first capture the output of that camera to a JPEG. This could be a program supplied with your camera, or a freeware application from the internet.

After you have a JPEG image, you can simply use Texture2D.LoadImage http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Texture2D.LoadImage.html

This will provide a new image to the texture as often as you call the loadimage method. If fast enough, it will appear as video, instead of screen captures.

Then, apply the texture to a gameobject within your game with something like

renderer.material.mainTexture = cameraJPEGtexture;