fr.jeanf.universal.player — one player, every input. A single player prefab that works in Mouse & Keyboard, Gamepad and VR, switching between them automatically, in both URP and HDRP.
This package was built for a hospital simulator (the UVS project) where the same scenario must be playable by a student at a desk, on a couch with a controller, or inside a headset — without authoring the interaction three times. Everything in the package follows from four principles:
- One player, every input. The player watches all connected devices and switches to whichever one you actually use — no menu, no setup, "most recent meaningful input wins". Using the mouse, keyboard or gamepad switches to desktop; picking up and pressing a VR controller (or donning the headset where the runtime reports presence) switches to VR — with
Ctrl+Alt+K/Ctrl+Alt+Vas explicit fallbacks for runtimes that don't report headset presence (e.g. some setups over Link). - Feature parity across modes. Interacting, grabbing, sitting, teleporting, menus — every feature raises the same events whatever the input device. If it works in VR it works on desktop, and vice versa. Gameplay code never needs to know which mode is active.
- Simple to set up, loud when broken. One menu click creates a working player for your render pipeline. A validation tool (
Tools/UniversalPlayer/ValidateSetup) and runtime guards report misconfiguration with actionable messages instead of failing silently. - The project owns the game; the package owns the player. Communication happens through ScriptableObject event channels and C# delegates (single
PlayerChannelshub — seeDocumentation~/player-channels-hub.md). The map, the inventory, the menus, the scenario logic all live in your project; the player just reports what the user did.
- Automatic input switching between Mouse & Keyboard, Gamepad and VR (plus a free-fly debug camera)
- Locomotion & camera feel: walk, sprint, crouch, jump, momentum, head bob, turn tilt, landing dip
- True first-person body: a visible, animated body (Mixamo locomotion set) with one-click template setup
- Sitting on chairs in every mode (
Documentation~/sitting.md) - Teleportation: XRI-style stick teleport in VR, event-driven teleports (SO channels) everywhere
- Hands: tracked hand poses, controller grip/trigger pose ladder, grab highlight + ghost-hand grab preview, fingertip UI ray
- Hand appearance: swap gender, skin color, add gloves — all through events
- Pose & gesture authoring tools: a step-by-step Pose Editor wizard with IK, mirroring, auto-pose and gesture presets (see below)
- Reticle (desktop/gamepad): tints over anything usable, fills up for gaze-validated actions, flashes pinkish-red on rejected requests (see Cursor feedback)
- Safety nets: infinite-fall recovery, XR health diagnostics, controller battery warnings + auto-pause
Add the scoped registry in Project Settings → Package Manager:
- Click + under Scoped Registries
- Name:
jeanf - URL:
https://registry.npmjs.com - Scope:
fr.jeanf
Then install Universal Player from the Package Manager (My Registries). Dependencies (Input System, XR Interaction Toolkit, XR Hands, OpenXR, event system…) are pulled in automatically.
Make sure the new Input System is active: Edit → Project Settings → Player → Configuration → Active Input Handling → Input System Package (or Both).
Requires Unity 2022.3+, URP or HDRP.
- In your scene's Hierarchy: Right click → Create Universal Player. This creates a player for your current rendering pipeline, with the camera bound to everything that needs it.
- Run
Tools/UniversalPlayer/ValidateSetup— it checks the scene wiring and tells you exactly what to fix if anything is off. - Press Play. Move with WASD, plug in a gamepad and touch a stick, or put on a headset — the player follows you.
To integrate with your project, copy the PlayerChannels asset locally (the player offers a project-local copy on request) and subscribe to its events — teleports, map/inventory toggles, interactions — from your own systems. This keeps your wiring safe from package updates.
| Mode | How it activates | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Mouse & Keyboard | Any key press, click or mouse movement | First-person, center-screen reticle (tints green over anything usable, fills up for gaze-validated actions) |
| Gamepad | Any button/stick input on a connected gamepad | Same first-person experience as Mouse & Keyboard |
| VR | Press a VR controller button, or don the headset where the runtime reports presence (Ctrl+Alt+V to force) |
XR Interaction Toolkit rig: tracked hands with poses, grab preview (highlight + ghost hand), fingertip UI ray |
| Free camera | Toggled from Mouse & Keyboard or Gamepad (see bindings) | Detached fly-through camera for debugging/inspection; toggling again returns to the previous mode |
Leaving VR: any deliberate keyboard, mouse or gamepad input drops back to desktop;
Ctrl+Alt+Kforces it even when the headset still reports as worn. Entering VR: a controller button orCtrl+Alt+Vis the reliable path on runtimes that don't reportuserPresence. A debug HUD (Ctrl+Alt+H) shows the live mode/presence state.
All bindings live in Runtime/InputActions/UniversalPlayer_InputActions.inputactions (FPS action map) and can be remapped per project.
| Action | Mouse & Keyboard | Gamepad |
|---|---|---|
| Move | W A S D / arrow keys |
Left stick |
| Look around | Mouse | Right stick |
| Sprint | Left Shift |
Left stick press (L3) |
| Crouch (toggle) | C |
Right stick press (R3) |
| Jump | Space |
Y |
| Interact / take object | E / left click |
A or right trigger |
| Draw primary item | 1 |
D-pad up |
| Draw secondary item | 2 |
D-pad down |
Map (raises toggleMap channel) |
M |
D-pad left |
Inventory (raises toggleInventory channel) |
I |
D-pad right |
| Main menu | Esc |
Start |
| Pause | P |
Select |
| Toggle free camera | Ctrl+Alt+F |
Hold D-pad down + Y |
| Force Keyboard & Mouse (leave VR) | Ctrl+Alt+K |
— |
| Force VR | Ctrl+Alt+V |
Press any controller button |
Map and Inventory only report the press on their ScriptableObject event channels (PlayerChannelsSO.toggleMap / toggleInventory) — the project owns both UIs and their open/close state.
Free camera, while active:
| Action | Mouse & Keyboard | Gamepad |
|---|---|---|
| Move | W A S D |
Left stick |
| Look around | Mouse (hold right click to rotate) | Right stick |
| Up / down | E / Q |
Right trigger / left trigger |
| Exit | Ctrl+Alt+F |
Hold D-pad down + Y |
VR uses the standard XR Interaction Toolkit bindings: sticks for locomotion/turning, grip to grab (with highlight + ghost-hand grab preview), trigger to select and click UI, plus gaze-timed validation where the scene uses it. The menu button (left controller) opens the main menu, like Esc/Start on desktop. Item, seat and UI interactions are the same events as on desktop — features behave identically across modes.
Opening the main menu (any mode) pauses the game and fades the world to black; closing it fades back to whatever the world was doing (still loading → stays black, head in wall → desaturated, otherwise clear).
The desktop / gamepad reticle is driven by a single CursorStateController on the
Player's _settings object — one place for every cursor color and icon:
| Field | When it shows |
|---|---|
| Normal / Tablet Cursor Color | resting color (tablet = while the primary item is drawn) |
| Normal / Tablet Cursor Sprite | optional icon overrides (tablet falls back to normal, normal falls back to the authored sprite) |
| Hover Color | aiming at anything usable — interactables, seats, pickables, tooltip objects |
| Click Color | while the interact/take button is held on something usable |
| Invalid Cursor Color (pinkish red) | flashed when a click/interaction is rejected |
When your game logic rejects a click ("you can't do that here", not enough resources, locked door, …), flash the reticle its invalid color from any script:
using jeanf.universalplayer;
// e.g. inside your interaction handler when the request is denied:
PlayerEvents.RaiseInvalidAction();That raises the package's internal InvalidActionSignaled delegate; CursorStateController
flashes the reticle Invalid Cursor Color for Invalid Flash Seconds (default 0.35 s),
overriding hover/click/resting, then returns to the correct resting color. No inspector
wiring — it's a static call. Tune the color and duration on the CursorStateController.
VR hides the reticle, so this is M&K / gamepad feedback. A rejected VR poke/ray should be signalled on the interactable itself (haptics / sound). If you drive rejections from a ScriptableObject "action denied" channel today, call
PlayerEvents.RaiseInvalidAction()from that channel's listener — a dedicated hub slot arrives with the channel-hub phase 2.
Open Tools/UniversalPlayer/Pose Editor. The window is a step-by-step wizard:
- Pose — select an existing pose asset or create a new one
- Target — is the pose for a held object or a bare hand gesture?
- Object — assign the object (held-object poses only; the hands auto-spawn around it at correct scale, whatever the object's scale)
- Edit — pose in the Scene view, live-saved into the asset
- Save / mirror — mirror left↔right across a selectable, visualized plane
Editing tools in the Scene view:
- Joint dots (deep blue, depth-graded) — click to get a rotation handle; joints only rotate, bone lengths can never change
- Orange root dot — move/rotate the whole hand
- Pink fingertip cubes — IK targets with a plane-drag move gizmo; the solver is a planar hinge chain with anatomical flexion limits (no twisted or broken fingers)
- Auto-pose — curls the fingers until they contact the object or an already-posed finger
- Gesture presets — one-click fist, point, thumbs up, rock horns, "I love you"… with a flexibility slider driving anatomical coupling (neighbour drag, fingertip lag, convergence)
- Toggles for the VR controller model, finger colliders, mirror plane and player-view reference
- A Reset footer if things ever get janky
Hands get per-phalanx box colliders at runtime (the bind-pose mesh collider is replaced automatically); a button in the editor bakes them into your hand prefabs.
Design docs live in Documentation~/:
player-channels-hub.md— how the package talks to your project (delegates + one channel bridge)true-first-person-body.md— the visible body architecturesitting.md— Seat + SitController across modesaction-animation-binding.md— SO-based action → animation binding (proposal)gesture-wheel.md— controller gesture radial menu (design, upcoming)
To work on the package itself (instead of consuming it from the registry):
- Add the scoped registry (see Installation) and install Event System and Property Drawer from it
- Clone this repository into your project's
Assets/folder - Unity resolves the remaining dependencies from the manifest; if anything is missing,
ValidateSetupand the EditMode integrity tests will point at it
⚠️ Pushing tomainpublishes a signed release to the registry. Work on branches; merge deliberately.
- Unity 2022.3+
- URP and HDRP
- OpenXR (incl. Oculus/Meta) via XR Interaction Toolkit 3.x
- This repo was started during an artist residency called fantomas at Medrar in Cairo, October–December 2022, teaching artists to create artworks in VR.
- Since then it is supported by a research group at UQAR university (Canada): Laboratoire Onirique, and specifically the project UVS (Unité virtuelle de soins / Virtual Health Unit) initiated by Daniel Milhomme and Frédérique Banville.
- [3D] Jonathan Lepinay
- [Code] Nicolas Chouin, Felix Cotes-Charlebois & Jean-François Robin
- Partly inspired by Unity Open Project 1 for the event system.