virtual-reality

[clever sky]

Do you mean, if something hasn't been done, or if you see a problem with something?

Different topic: You guys know that fade to black thing that most devs do for teleportation?

I think it's shit.

Like everyone is doing it, and it gives you a 'smoother' feeling right. But most devs don't realize that it's also more disorientating.

Because you're blacking out the frame, and elimnating memory cues from previous to current location.

Like, a classic perceptual test is to do a test involving image differences. Without a blanking card in between, you can see what varies instantly when something changes.

Like a house with a chimney, and the same house with the chimney photoshopped out.

If you put a blank card in the middle, even if only for a moment, a lot less people are able to tell what went missing.

So it is in VR and teleportation; you put a fade to black in the middle of teleportation, and the brain drops half the place cues. It needs to recourse to higher level cognitive pathways to reorient itself.

Taking longer

Dash to teleport is the best in this regard.

[winged shale]

I agree!!

[real needle]

@clever sky If you can't do something because of a, b ,c, design around it (and make it better)

More iteration usually leads to better results, even though you thought your initial idea was the best

[clever sky]

I'd largely agree with what you're saying.

On the flipside, you should be mindful as to the nature of the initial idea in the first place.... a half assed implementation is not the same thing as a full proper implementation.

Discarding entire lines of inquiry because initial tests didn't pan out is...

Not great for your design 😛

[mighty carbon]

have you played new Doom @clever sky ?

[clever sky]

@mighty carbon You mean Doom 3 in VR?

Or you mean Doom 4 on desktop?

[mighty carbon]

or any other FPS that isn't "inclusive"

[clever sky]

Wait... it's Doom 5 now isn't it

[mighty carbon]

DOOM 2016 on any platform

[clever sky]

What about it? Context is important. Doom has history to it. It targets a heavily male demographic.

[mighty carbon]

so?

[clever sky]

The main point to be aware as a dev is; understand that you can target specific audiences while alienating other demographics.

[mighty carbon]

what if I want to make game that targets males, for VR?!

[clever sky]

Don't be surprised if your male only shooter game only resonates with a male demographic.

Feel free to.

Just do so with awareness of what you're doing.

[mighty carbon]

sure, it's common sense

[clever sky]

If you believe in more inclusivity, then you might want to be more careful about design choices.

If you don't, then whatever?

[mighty carbon]

I was just saying that since when designing a game for specific demographics became bad?

[clever sky]

About the same time the industry realized it was limiting its potential customer base

by repeatedly targeting one demographic and excluding others.

And that diversity in representation in both the people making games and the people buying them leads to better outcome in general for the industry

As an individual, you make an informed choice when you consider what you do (whatever it is you want to do) when you consider that context.

If you don't consider that context, then you're making an uninformed choice.

[mighty carbon]

I usually make what I want to play

I don't make something to please everyone

[clever sky]

That's fine. I think most developers operate like that.

But on the flipside, developers are running businesses.

[mighty carbon]

if it appeals to wide audience, awesome 😃

[clever sky]

And it's foolish to not consider some compromises away from exactly what you want, to a broader consideration of prevailing market sentiment.

[mighty carbon]

but I never design anything thinking "hmm, will X demographics like it?"

[clever sky]

Well I have... and it basically amounts to; ok, this works for me... but does it work for everyone? What other options can I give those people?

It's not like I'm compromising my core vision here. Only making small concensions to ensure that more people are happier with the experience.

And I'm not talking about social equality stuff here. I'm talking about movement options to cater to a wide variety of motion sickness sensitivities.

[mighty carbon]

aye

[winged shale]

and disabilities, it's at least important to consider. https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/5c648x/climbey_for_a_guy_13_years_in_a_wheelchair_all_i/

[clever sky]

Yes. My solution caters to people in wheel chairs too 😄

[uneven moon]

Seems I've got some heavy VR-sickness after using the Vive for a few weeks

Hand-eye coordination, balance are both off

Dizziness

Anyone ever experience this before + what helped?

[clever sky]

@uneven moon That's the first time I've heard of anyone been affected to that degree... are you talking about temporary or permanent changes?

In terms of dizziness, that's pretty usual; usually we call it motion sickness.

But the hand eye coordination been degraded is very unusual indeed. Unless you simply mean while dizzy.

Anyway... if it's a basic case of motion sickness, your best bet is simply to take your time acclimatizing yourself with VR.

Ensure that your computer is up to spec, so that it can run the experiences smoothly. Frame rate drops and judder can be sources of motion sickness.

Games with teleportation should be fine for motion sickness.

But games with free movement (like analog stick style movement) can cause a lot of motion sickness.

Your best bet will be to stop and rest whenever you start feeling weird in VR>

After a while, you acclimatize with repeated use and exposure.

[uneven moon]

Temporary changes, and yes only while I'm dizzy. I've been playing around with Google Earth VR a lot and that has a LOT of movement while standing still

Won't be doing VR for a bit

I generally feel uneasy

[sturdy coral]

In the 4.14 changelog it mentions: "Planar reflections of a partial scene, composited into reflection captures" -- how do you actually achieve this, is it through the actor include/actor exclude lists? Is there any way to just only include anything moveable?

[uneven moon]

My PC is up to spec, yeah. Running with the GTX 1070, no lag or judder whatsoever. How long does motion sickness last for you if its ever happened?

[sturdy coral]

I see there is a distance thing as well that you can use to exclude far parts of the scene

@uneven moon I've never had it mor than a few hours after but I don't generally get it except from really bad stuff

only uneasy part of google earth for me was when you transition the world from top down to face-on

[uneven moon]

What symptoms did you experience?

And yes that, but flying around while standing still was a bit uneasy for me and I don't normally get motion sick in VR

[sturdy coral]

bad choppy judder makes other things feel bad for a while, even scrolling on choppy android or something can kind of bring memories of it

I don't get too much from things with movement, mainly just things with performance problems

[uneven moon]

disorientation?

[sturdy coral]

but moving things can feel a little like you feel after getting off a treadmill after being on it for a long time, like the world is still moving

[uneven moon]

things like that?

Yeah I have that kind of feeling

But it's taking a while to wear off

Slowly

[sturdy coral]

you are using the comfort mode in google earth?

[uneven moon]

No

[sturdy coral]

yeah, you probably should, if you hit the trigger at the same time as the touchpad someone said it will also make you fly slower

and double tap pad to fly faster

[uneven moon]

Yea very true, I didn't realise that for a while so I got really disoriented flying around and scaling up and down quickly

[sturdy coral]

yeah it might be something with the scaling

[uneven moon]

Also, I'm unsure as to the question you had earlier, sorry

[sturdy coral]

when I first tried the VR editor it made me feel a little off afterwards

I think it was the first thing I used that smoothly changed scale instead of snapping

[uneven moon]

Yeah same with the VR editor, it was strange processing that scale difference

It's not natural, but interesting

Surely negative implications

We'll have to see haha

[winged shale]

@uneven moon when I first tried VR a few years ago with the DK1, I noticed something that I called "rift shift" at the time: the real world feels unreal. Like my hand motions did not correspond properly in space.

I think it's just something that goes away after a long time developing, I haven't felt that way in years. Although Thursday I had an awful kind of vertigo happen while I was sitting down randomly. Not even near a HMD for days... Just a lot of stress. I wonder what physiological changes we're going to see in people with long term VR exposure? The neural plasticity of our retina and ganglion cells certainly changes with use like when using glasses to correct myopia..

[clever sky]

@uneven moon You should definetly keep comfort mode on if you're new to VR.

It's not as immersive as without it, but it's also not as nauseating.

Also, using trigger pull is generally a better movement technique in Google Earth

i.e. point at the landscape, pull trigger, then pull the map towards you while held.

It does a loose version of what I call the 'self-caused motion illusion', which generally means you won't expect actual motion, as your brain thinks you're causing the visual motion direclty with your hands

@winged shale I think our neuroplasticity in general will allow us to adapt to a wide variety of shifting conditions without substantial permanent effects. It's mainly physiological damage that effects us more permanently.

e.g. Something as fundamental as vision can be messed with quite stably; wear a pair of glasses that flip the world and after a day, you'll be operating perfectly fine.

Take them off after a week, and it'll take about the same amount of time to readapt.

[runic wave]

I had terrible headaches the first few days after using VR

my guess is that it was related to my eyes trying to focus on objects and failing

[wintry escarp]

did you give up using vr or did the headaches stop

using some poor guinea pig for your vr

[halcyon island]

those that have switched to 4.14 or just know

how do the scalability settings of anti aliasing correlate to the 2x 4x 8x MSAA settings typically used to set MSAA

likeg what is 'medium', what is 'epic'. i assume they are specific settings

[wintry escarp]

is there a way to have the s7 on power saving mode without the stupid message being visible all the time?

[mighty carbon]

in Gear VR ?

you can't have phone in power saving mode when using it for VR

[leaden jackal]

Not a fan of this new GeForce Experience app. Bad enough they wanted my personal info to login but they completely broke Shadowplay. Cant record VR gameplay in UE4 anymore.

Anyone know a fix for this?

http://i.imgur.com/mC1aKVE.gifv

nm, I think I found the issue. Seems it doesnt like it when you set the VR preview to full screen. Leaving it windowed makes a full screen recording.

[sullen stirrup]

dahell

[leaden jackal]

Still not fully fixed. Might have to rollback to early GeForce Experience 😦

[runic wave]

@wintry escarp Got used to it, still have some eyestrain though

[real needle]

@runic wave Have you found and set your IPD properly?

You might be outside of the 60-70 range, and then there's not much to do unfortunately...

[wintry escarp]

motorsep: no just on the S7, when you enable power saving it keeps a stupid msg box reminding you

[mighty carbon]

hmm.. dont recall seeing that on S6

[leaden jackal]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpHwpjVasQ Currently working on a PaperBoy inspired arcade game for Oculus Touch and HTC Vive. I'm quite pleased with how well the bike steering turned out.

[mighty carbon]

cool, but how about motion sickness ?

[leaden jackal]

Quite comfortable and I'm very sensitive to simulation sickness. Had a few nausia triggers caused by going up on the curbs but we managed to get that all fixed yesterday. Not bad for 5 days worth of work though 😃

[sullen stirrup]

sweet

is it like an infinite run

or do you always end up being hit

😄

[mighty carbon]

👌

[leaden jackal]

That's a tricky intersection to get past, lol. The delivery route extends every 7 days assuming you haven't lost all of your customers by then. Day 7 has a "boss fight" along with coin pickups for collecting the weekly payment for the route.

We've got a few other game modes planned for it as well but focusing on the Paperboy type first.

[wintry escarp]

yay, paperboy in 3d

[fresh laurel]

@leaden jackal I Loved paper boy back in the day

Glad to see a 3d version 😄

[leaden jackal]

Thanks! It was always a favorite of mine. We're having a blast working on it.

[halcyon island]

anyone using light scenarios in 4.14

normally these squares would mean i had to bake the lights post changing the terrain or something

but now i can't make this go away

[rare violet]

Hey guys, if I am doing a Multicast (from server) and I have a pawn reference I pass (self from a clients pawn), how do I get each clients version of that pawn to spawn something on? Does that pawn automatically point to each clients version of the pawn? it seems that only the triggering clients pawn gets the spawn on it

[sullen stirrup]

#multiplayer

[clever sky]

@leaden jackal looks like good fun 😄

[leaden jackal]

Thanks. Made a new gif showing the handlebar controls: http://i.imgur.com/1stmTat.gifv

[clever sky]

Do you play seated?

[leaden jackal]

Thats how I've mainly been playing

[leaden jackal]

http://uploadvr.com/v-brings-favorite-apps-vr-free-beta-available-now/

I may never leave Elite if I get that app

[clever sky]

Amazing.

I might actually play some elite with that app.

Then I'll realize that I don't like Elite as it is anyway 😛

[leaden jackal]

Lol

[clever sky]

Seriously though

That'll make my virtual apartment an amazing place to chill.

Blah 😛 it's Rift only at this stage

[rare violet]

Anyone know if the Motion Controller Component is working in multiplayer yet?

Bugfix: Fixed Motion Controllers on remote clients using data from attached motion controllers. Can now replicate motion controllers across the network without having local devices interfere.

thats from the 4.13 changelist, but i can only seem to get one character to do it

[wicked oak]

no its not

but you can send the transform easily with RPCs

[clever sky]

Dayum. 3D widgets kill forward rendering?

I've got a tutorial level with about 30 widget billboards.

And slate 3D is spiking 10-20ms every few frames

Switched back to deferred.

And UI doesn't even register on GPU 😛

[mighty carbon]

https://mobile.twitter.com/UnrealAlexander/status/800320617568489472

eXi is asking there: 'What exactly do you need in terms of "VR Multiplayer Setup"?'

So, whoever works with MP in VR, please post/email him what you would like to know so we all could have nice PDF reference a la UE4 Network Compendium

[winged shale]

@clever sky wtf noooo

[clever sky]

Sup

[winged shale]

why would that happen

the slate thing

[clever sky]

Ah... because I didn't know how to read GPU stats 😛

And I still don't really!

[winged shale]

wait so there's no problem?

[clever sky]

Probably not.

Well there is. Shadows.

[winged shale]

I was about to get realllllly sad about it all

[clever sky]

Haha 😛

Well you can get sad about how bad MSAA is.

[winged shale]

ahead of you mate

[clever sky]

You were the promised one!

Hahaha

[pallid echo]

@mighty carbon No one has been able to figure it out. lol

[mighty carbon]

So you not sure what you can't get working to get smooth MP in VR?

[pallid echo]

Player Replication just doesn't work. @mighty carbon

Motion Controllers don't replicate and only way to supposedly hack around it is to set everything on a tick however even that isn't working anymore.

[clever sky]

It's not working anymore?

I think I talked to some guy that stuck it into a struct.

[pallid echo]

Any one I have talked to said they can't get it working and end up having to use the VR Expansion Plugin that is on the forums.

Whatever is in that plugin makes it work.

[clever sky]

Fair enough.

Well I use that plugin... so no worries? 😛

[pallid echo]

For you I guess lol

I just don't like the fact we are supposed to be able to do it without a plugin yet we can't.

[clever sky]

VRExpansion is pretty much like Unreal's VRTK

unreal's version.

[pallid echo]

Agreed. ^ lol

That's the one thing I like about Unity. SOOOOOOOOO many example projects out there.

But....

UE4 is better lol

[clever sky]

But the funny thing about it is everyone is happy to recommend and jump on VRTK

But VRExpansionPlugin having a harder time getting traction 😛

I think it's mainly that it's not as easily plug and play

Mordentral does not do a good walk through for noobs 😛

'yeah, just compile this thing, oh btw, you need to put all this stuff in the correct folders yourself, and you should probably know how unreal plugins work before using mine.'

But totally worth the effort of figuring it out.

[mighty carbon]

@pallid echo have you filed bug report?

[pallid echo]

Not yet for 4.14

But for the past ones yup

[mighty carbon]

Hmm..

[wintry escarp]

could you do wipeout in vr or would it cause sickness

[mighty carbon]

What's wipeout ?

[wintry escarp]

O_O

futuristic track racer with floating cars/ships

[winged shale]

WOW. Down to 3.91 ms average scene render with forward shading on base clocked 1080

[jagged vale]

should have my vive in a few hours, much excite 😄 going to play through my large list of vr games / vr apps and think about how i'll be implmenting vr for black wool

[jagged vale]

omg a fedex truck, yay

[wintry escarp]

what was it with deferred rendering?

[pearl grove]

Has anyone heard of any ETA out of nvidia as to when the Multi-res branch will be upgraded to 4.14 ?

[frosty geode]

Anyone else having an issue in 4.14 where bHMDEnabled is basically always true, even when playing a non-VR viewport session?

[deft badge]

Howdy all

From the 4.4 release notes

Anyone know how to enable this? :

NEW: VR LOADING MOVIES

The engine now supports loading movies on Oculus, GearVR, SteamVR, and PSVR. These run on the rendering thread, and can mask framerate hiccups as you load up your content. To use the splash screen, you can set a texture using the "Set Splash Screen" node, or choose to automatically have it appear when you load a map with the “Enable Auto Loading Splash Screen” node.

[mighty carbon]

@wintry escarp not big on racing, but the only way to find out is to make a prototype and test it 😄

[clever sky]

@wintry escarp You can try a wipe out like game with Redout

[wintry escarp]

whats redout?

[frosty geode]

@deft badge Yep the Set Splash Screen node works great. It accepts a texture file, but it does also support movies. Look up what an Unreal Media Texture is and you'll find a process for creating movie textures in Unreal, which are playable in the splash screen node.

[clever sky]

@wintry escarp http://store.steampowered.com/app/517710/

[deft badge]

@frosty geode I'm getting no movie playing during loading. As in, I've created a working movie material which shows in the world (for testing)

But during loading, a get a black screen in from of me, with no movie 😦

I've tried making the material a surface, post process and UI

No difference sadly

[frosty geode]

Ah, hmm. Have you checked to see a static image works? I found that it was a bit janky, I had to mess with the set show splash boolean a bit and the show splash node to get it to show up

[clever sky]

@deft badge You guys are great, talking about the exact thing I needed for my own project 😛

No sarcasm either!

While we're on the subject; if you don't use a movie file, and just go with a texture... what are the requirements for the texture?

Can it be a 360 sphere?

[frosty geode]

Nice! I think there's also a node for clearing splash, you could try calling that node before the set, just to see if that works

Actually if you want a 360 sphere it's better to just go with adding a new stereo layer

[clever sky]

So what does splash screen do? Attach a texture to your face?

[frosty geode]

It's not attached, it's a couple meters or so in front of you

[clever sky]

Ah...

[frosty geode]

but stereo layer has settings for being attahed or not, for 360, I forget what other settings

[clever sky]

So the splashscreen overrides the cut to SteamVR on level load right?

[frosty geode]

Ahh, I haven't tested this, I think it's supposed to though yeah

[deft badge]

ok, another question. Where did you start plaing your movie?

playing

[frosty geode]

I tried game instance but couldn't get that to work. Our team just switched to 4.14, so we're currently deciding the best implementation of this.

[deft badge]

I mean I've got a media player var on my game instance.

And I kick of the play node in it's init event

That seems to be working in the level that uses the media texture

[frosty geode]

We have a main load blueprint that is almost always spawned in a persistent map we load before any level, so when we'd like to use a stereo splash screen instead of a 3d load scene we're just going to call it from that main load blueprint on those persistent maps

ah hm, maybe i'll go back and try it again

[clever sky]

So... splashscreen doesn't override the SteamVR compositor

But it does have the curious propery of blacking out my HMD in editor when I tick 'show on set'

Even though the texture is completely white...

And continue to black out the HMD even after unchecking, until I restart the editor...

[deft badge]

@clever sky Same here

So.....

I stopped clicking that 😃

[clever sky]

Good to know I'm not the only one 😛

[deft badge]

I still can't get anything but a black rectangle screen showing. I tried using just a static texture. Then nothing appears at all. (no rectangle)

k, tried a bunch of different textures. One of them worked. Not sure what the dif was, possibly no mip levels

[clever sky]

Nice! It worked!

Now I just need to figure out the 360 stereo one

[pearl tangle]

if its just using a material you should be able to create a stereo material for the movie easily enough

does it actually stop you getting kicked back into the compositor side of things 100% of the time? haven't had a chance to play with it yet

[clever sky]

I haven't managed to stop compositor from showing up. Best I've managed is to get a white square floating in compositor 😛

And even that isn't currently working

[pearl tangle]

a white square inside the compositor?

[clever sky]

Yep. Big white square because that's the texture I used for the splash screen 😛

So a floating window rather than a 360 thing

[dusk vigil]

I'm looking for the default Input mapping Touch vs Vive, been searching through the documentation but haven't found anything yet. Any clues?

[pearl tangle]

thats odd that it still shows it in there but with the steam vr stuff in thebackground though

[clever sky]

Yeah it is!

Worst is, I broke it and I can't get it to come back!

[pearl tangle]

you should be able to find some images pinned in here with the controller mappings @dusk vigil

hah well it was interesting that you managed to do that i nthe first place

[dusk vigil]

Thanks ZoltanJr!

[pearl tangle]

i did figure out that you can actually map a youtube 360 video onto a sphere as a material using the UMG web browser component

im trying to figure out the best way to demonstrate multiple different projects to clients and stuff at the moment. whether I try and get all our unreal stuff running on the 1 version and just create a level selector and then create a 360 video player in there for those things or whether I just try and use the Vive home or create a custom VR launcher application or something

[clever sky]

What's the best way to create a laser pointer that mimics the steam VR menu?

I tried myself... created a beam particle with a target point set in the actor

Got that working, cool.

Now for the laser point; the sparkly bit at the end to let the user know it's hit.

Move that to the same location as the hit location that the target beam end point goes to.

And... the beam has a 1-2 frame lag on it!

Wtf!

Is there a way of doing a beam looking thing without it been so laggy?

[sturdy coral]

if you are setting a target point in normal game code it isn't going to be late reprojected

I would just do a big static mesh, and scale it lengthwise based on where a trace hits

[clever sky]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too...

[sturdy coral]

then do and texturing and stuff for the sparkles in worldspace

so that they don't get weirdly scaled like if you did it in UV space

[clever sky]

But then... how do you get the laser component to face you?

or would you just do a cross mesh with 2 planes?

That... would look weird.

[sturdy coral]

there is a laser pointer mesh in engine

just make a static mesh, browse and turn on engine content

[clever sky]

You mean the cylinder?

[sturdy coral]

when you select your mesh search laser, in view options turn on engine content to make sure it shows up

[clever sky]

Found it

[sturdy coral]

you scale it in Z

it is probably from the VR editor

[clever sky]

Cheers. I'll have a play with it.

[sturdy coral]

there are probably material params to affect the translucency and stuff

[clever sky]

Yeah.

[sturdy coral]

but yeah, by attaching it you will get the low latency update from the controller, make sure you actually attach it and don't just try updating it's location from the game thread. scaling will be done from the game thread and will lag a frame but that shouldn't be an issue

[clever sky]

Hmmmm....

What's weird is I'm updating the point position with set world location

and using the same coordinates as the beam end point

Even though I've parented the point to the laser beam in turn parented to the controller...

Shouldn't they both be updated to the same location?

[sturdy coral]

you are seeing the end point lag the beam or vice versa?

[clever sky]

beam lagging the point.

Calling the same hit location

[sturdy coral]

if the point is attached, then when you rotate the controller, it will get the low latency update even though the depth of it along the beam will get updated one frame behind

so it will still seem to be low latency

[dusk vigil]

UE4 Oculus Touch controller mapping

[sturdy coral]

I don't know about the beam specifically since it is a particle system

[clever sky]

So the best bet is to not attach.

I don't care that much about the lag

except that it's very obvious when things aren't working if they don't match up 😛

[sturdy coral]

what I'm guessing is the beam particle uses endpoints that you set in your game code?

so those wouldn't be low latency

[clever sky]

Yeah

You can set the beam particle target point to actor specified.

So I've called the node on tick

[sturdy coral]

yeah so the beam is lagging and then the end point meshes aren't (as much) because they are attached and get the late reprojection

yeah so just set the endpoints as unattached actors or something and set their position in world space and it should match up

or move from beam to the static mesh

[clever sky]

So basically everything attached to the controllers get some sort of priority boost. Except beam end point because that's another function from another thing?

[sturdy coral]

yeah

[clever sky]

Cool. Ok, at least things are a bit clearer now 😃

[sturdy coral]

after the game thread has run and all the draw calls are queued up, at the last second there is an update to the HMD location/rotation matrix and the controllers too (if 'low latency update' is checked)

the beam may get rotated but it's endpoint that it uses to draw itself was still set from an earlier period of time during your game thread

where the other stuff has just been updated with the latest tracking data at the last second

anything in the attachment chain

the beam is in the chain, but it's endpoint is something separate

[clever sky]

Yeah

Makes sense now.

Cheers for the help!

[sturdy coral]

n/p

[pearl tangle]

ok 1070 in a laptop is definitely not as powerful as the 1070 in the little zotak zbox

bloody thing died on me when trying to start it for an event though

[cobalt relic]

Rule of thumb, laptop GPUs are usually 50% the power of the desktop version

I think nvidia said they'll drop that shady naming

I don't know how many people I've seen said "But I have a X, it can run Crysis", only to find out they don't actually have a X

[hard light]

I've heard people claim that the 1000 series laptop cards are the same as the desktop cards, but I have been skeptical

[pearl tangle]

yeah from all the benchmarks I have seen the 1000 series is about 10-15% lower down than the desktop. but I had the zotak magnus en1070 and it was running just as well as the desktop 1. but this laptop 1 i got as a replacement had to drop settings a lot more

I can still run all my stuff ok with it but bloody annoying the zbox died on me

not quite sure what happened with it

[hard light]

to be fair, 10-15% isn't so bad

the GTX965m I had was way, way behind the GTX970

[ionic fjord]

the laptop 10X0 cards are the same silicon as the desktop aren't they? Just thermal constraints mean they don't run quite as fast

[hard light]

I don't believe they're actually the same, but they are a lot more similar than models used to be

[cobalt relic]

It's still annoying that nVidia uses the same denomination. A laptop 1070 is not a desktop 1070, not could it be

They should call that a 1060 and be done with it

I think they're supposed to be the same die now, yeah

Obviously not the same supporting equipment for power / memory / etc

[hard light]

if they called it a 1060, then you're just comparing it with a 1060 :p

[cobalt relic]

A 1065 then

[hard light]

they should really just have a different numbering system for mobile / notebook

[cobalt relic]

That's what I meant, I didn't know there was a 1060

[hard light]

if they stopped calling them 10XXs, then people would stop comparing them as such

[cobalt relic]

Stuff like that is why I hate marketing. You just know it's supposed to be misleading

[hard light]

case in point, the 965m vs the 970:
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2954&cmp[]=3113

[wicked oak]

they are actually higher binned than the desktop counterpart

but with lower clock

[ionic fjord]

still, it's great we can get VR capable GPUs in sensible sized laptops now.

[hard light]

you'd think by the numbering system that a 965m is somewhat similat to a 970

[ionic fjord]

Lugging my desktop to our last UE meetup was painful

[hard light]

but it isn't, it's way, way less capable

[wicked oak]

that "M" its quite huge

[cobalt relic]

The 9XX were completely different GPUs for M

That was truly shameful

[wicked oak]

yeah, completely different

the 1060 (m) is very very similar to a desktop 1060

[cobalt relic]

10XX at least are quite close

[wicked oak]

but the desktop one has faster mem and clocks

[cobalt relic]

It just happens to be 20% slower

And now they don't even have the M

So it's still misleading imho

[wicked oak]

to be fair, even at 20% slower, the laptops with a 1070 are incredibly brutal

it shocks me that my laptop with a 1070 runs faster than my overclocked desktop with a 970

[cobalt relic]

Yeah a mobile 1070 is still pretty amazing

My desktop 970 amazes me already

[wicked oak]

its also a 1800 dollas laptop...

thats one kickass desktop you can build at that price

[cobalt relic]

When you start enjoying your own "art", you know the Unreal renderer is nice 😄

[native cedar]

Did anyone have issues with bloom?

mine seems to stick to the screen

like a sticky glow effect

(working on HTC Vive UE4.13)

[deft badge]

Yeah bloom is extra bright on the Vive we noticed

[native cedar]

thing is, it sticks to the screen

even if you look away

[deft badge]

It's also expensive

[native cedar]

it is, kinda

but necessary for the current project, I was hoping to find someone who had the same issue

[pearl tangle]

well im able to run my vr stuff on the 1070 on here but have to bump the scaling back down

[wicked oak]

add hardware clear

you arent clearing the pixels behind

in rendernig properties

[native cedar]

holy fuck

you are right

[wicked oak]

ive had the exact same issue myself

[native cedar]

hardware clear

god

thank you

[pearl tangle]

but on the zbox en1070 I was able to run Raw Data at maxed settings for everything with scaling a 150% so much better than i could run on my full watercooled 980 desktop

[deft badge]

"hardware clear"?

[native cedar]

I owe you three pennies

[pearl tangle]

@wicked oak I got this asus gl502vs for 1600 euros. the zbox without any ram or hdd cost $1200 usd then i put 32gb ram and a 512gb PCI-e m2 drive in it so came out around $1800 USD

but this thing only has 8gb ram and a crappy hdd in it for that price so gotta pop them out

[deft badge]

oh, hardware clear.

Not necessary when using a skybox

[native cedar]

I use a skybox

but I think hardware clear will solve

I'm just going to run a packaged build and see if the sticky bloom issue is there

[pearl tangle]

shipping build vs developer build can sometimes have some interesting differences

[native cedar]

yes it was somehow the clear thing not clearing the bloom, even if I had a skybox

so for anyone who wants to go bloomy on VR, you better have dat hardware clear option enabled

[wicked oak]

its due to the steamvr cutting parts of the screen

on VR you pretty much need to do a clear

[clever sky]

Bloody splash screens

How'd I get you working??

And how did I break you??

Why you so mysterious??!

[pearl tangle]

are you sure you didn't just imagine it?

[clever sky]

Well... that might be possible. But only if the rest of my days memories are similarly corrupted 😛

So... highly improbable!

[pearl tangle]

idno. sometimes you just get corrupted sectors and the rest is perfectly fine

watch out though because once you start getting corrupted sectors it will usually start to spread

[clever sky]

😛

[hard light]

in 4.14, don't you just use the 'set splash screen' node?

[clever sky]

You'd think so right?

But I don't actually know where/how, because setting it in the level blue print worked then didn't work...

Don't know if its set in the level your transferring to or away from (I tried both)

Ideally, I'd like to stop compositor from coming up on load.

[hard light]

figures xD

[clever sky]

But right now, I'd be happy having a screen come up that says loading, even if you get punted into compositor (which is what set splash is doing when it works).

Because quiting the game looks an awful lot like loading the next level 😛

[hard light]

pff, if you quit in VR, you quit in real life!

(to be fair, I hadn't even considered that as a concern)

once I'm quitting a game, I'm taking the headset off, so..

[pearl tangle]

i think the better way to do it is actually with level streaming

so you have a persistent level which is your "loading screen" so that it is always there. And you just put the player in that location and then bump them out to the other location once you have finished streaming in the other content

would depend on what you want to do with your actual loading screen though I suppose if that works the way you want it but it should avoid kicking you out because it's never actually loading a new level its just streaming in sub levels

[clever sky]

Yeah, I'll probably have to do it that way Zoltan. Just means I have to figure out level streaming 😛

Kinda frustrating, because all I want is to white out the compositor

nothing fancy!

I have a fade to white transition on level load

Because you enter a door with an intense white glow

then it kicks you into compositor.

Then it loads and fades from white to alpha nothing.

[hard light]

"New: Added support for getting the HMD Device name (e.g. "OculusRift," "SteamVR," "PSVR," etc) through Blueprints and C++."

FINALLY

https://giphy.com/gifs/n4oKYFlAcv2AU

[native cedar]

@clever sky I also am looking for something simple to avoid level streaming, or worse having to implement multiple levels without streaming.

[clever sky]

@native cedar Have you found anything?

[native cedar]

@clever sky nay, I know that it's not something you do in unreal, and that every pc has to handle his compositor differently. This means that you can't implement a custom compositor on a build, it's a thing in the Vive settings and you ue4 game can do nothing about it

you can somehow use the compositor framework in c++ but I don't know much else

you're probably far more ahead than me

[clever sky]

Then how the hell did I get a splash screen up in Unreal on level load? 😛

That's what spins me out!

It worked and then... didn't!

[native cedar]

maybe the compositor did not kick in at all

[clever sky]

Nope. It was definetly there.

[native cedar]

okay

[clever sky]

I've got a garish beach background.

[native cedar]

if the guys from Raw Data did it, then so can we!

[clever sky]

And it loaded along with a white square that I was using to test the splash functionality.

Exactly!

[native cedar]

There is a command to change the skybox texture

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?107253-Customization-of-SteamVR

[clever sky]

Ooh nice

Wait... skybox?

Like the level skybox? Or the steam compositor background?

[hard light]

I'd assume steam compositor background, given that your skybox is a thing entirely within your control already 😉

[native cedar]

the thing you see when the application freezes is not just a texture

it is more than a texture, I think a skybox

you can change them with the right commands, I don't know much more

[pearl tangle]

yeah the raw data guys do it the way i mentioned. steaming levels rather than loading levels

[hard light]

the 'skybox' appears to be a cubemap

[pearl tangle]

there is no point trying to change the steam compositor skybox because if they are using an "environment" with a 3d model in there instead of just a skybox then it wont do anything

[native cedar]

yeah a cubemap, sorry

[clever sky]

That's true!

[pearl tangle]

and you wont be able to block the environment

[clever sky]

But then.

What the hell is Valve doing that

lets them change load scenes

Using Unity for starters

[pearl tangle]

they are actually loading up different programs entirely

[clever sky]

Whaaaa

[pearl tangle]

some of the stuff in the lab is built in unity, some is built in source. they are loading up different software in there from what I have read

[hard light]

that doesn't sound right

[pearl tangle]

I was looking at potentially doing that with unreal as well to avoid creating my own 360 video player and just load up another player from within an unreal hub

yeah it sounded very odd to me too but read it in a couple of places before

[clever sky]

I've seen people creating seperate executables for the different programs

So I believe it.

different short cuts in SteamVR anyway.

[winged shale]

It is correct. Notice how it launches separate windows of experiences that were made from different times

[pearl tangle]

yep but it kicks you into their "loading hub" while it's doing that. which makes steam not think the program has locked and is loading something else

[clever sky]

Hahaha.

Fuckin' Valve whatcha doing to us

If you're going to make the back end, don't hack around it with fuckin magic!

Give us something easy to work with ; ;. Some of us only have months of experience in dev!

[hard light]

looks like the Lab is 3 binaries

only the secret shop and robot repair are seperated

the rest is all the main app

[clever sky]

Ah...

Well...

[spring pond]

Robot repair and secret shop are source 2 and the rest of the lab is unity + valve render

[clever sky]

They're still doing something to prevent it from dropping back into normal compositor

Well that makes sense.

[pearl tangle]

i know in unity you can access the skybox side of things too, has anybody tried it since environments got added?

[hard light]

Secret Shop is clearly also unity

[spring pond]

I feel like the lab just pushes a special graphic overlay to the chaperone, but I don't know if thats an SDK feature

[pearl tangle]

why clearly?

[hard light]

because you can see it from it's file structure

[pearl tangle]

ah gotcha, haven't bothered poking around in there

[spring pond]

Maybe even robot repair is unity, i might be wrong there to. The DOTA client's VR mode is obviously source tho

but thats not a part of the lab

[hard light]

Robot Repair seems to be Source

[pearl tangle]

i still haven't tried out that dota 2 spectator yet either. does look quite impressive. Robot repair was done ages back so probably 1 of their first 1s in there

[clever sky]

Man. I need to get good with the C++ side D:

[spring pond]

The DOTA spectator mode is so so. It's really awesome in a lot of ways, but two things I have trouble with: when spectating a game teleporting around sometimes you get disoriented and miss the action. The other problem is the sky/distance fog break my immersion

The theater mode if you have friends would be amazing tho, all the stats and hero health/inventory + the regular screen all in one big space is really dope

[clever sky]

DOTA spectator is really cool for DOTA fans. It's a kinda cool toy for the rest of us.

But... unless you're a fan, it's not that interesting? 😛

[spring pond]

of course it wouldn't be. It's not going to suddenly make you love dota

even as a DOTA fan I'd rather just watch games from my HDTV

[clever sky]

Yeah.

I think the main problem is you lose out on the directed action

while following them in VR mode.

I think there's a button in there that lets you teleport to the caster view?

But it doesn't seem to frame the action properly (doesn't rotate you, or maybe just not following quick camera movements).

Should be something like a caster camera to let you know what they're looking at

caster camera floating around like that Mario 64 flying turtle camera dude.

[pearl tangle]

i have never actually watched a dota/lol/dota 2 match or anything before. played lots of dota and hon and dota 2 but never 1 to sit and watch other people play something

[spring pond]

In some way I wish you could just stand over the map like a table and just lean in

[clever sky]

That'd be nice.

The layout of DOTA map just isn't great for standing above it.

[spring pond]

I am too old and don't have time to get good at DOTA as much as I love it, plus most of my friends don't want to play, so I watch the majors/international and don't really play much

[pearl tangle]

i thought you could do that? doesn't it have the little tabletop view there?

[clever sky]

It's very flat.

[pearl tangle]

or is it just marker showing the positions?

[clever sky]

And the features are not very tall.

And up close, the characters and animations are janky 😛

[pearl tangle]

yeah the community is not exactly welcoming with mobas

[spring pond]

^^^

[clever sky]

There's a 2D map view

when you're in theatre mode.

[spring pond]

we have a DOTA slack channel at work with enough people on it, I'm sure I could play with a bunch of adults there should I want to get back into it

[pearl tangle]

especially if you just want to have fun and don't really care about winning. was really annoying with HON when everybody was so concerned about their Kill to Death ratio

[clever sky]

That's kinda the problem with deep games.

[pearl tangle]

And then once you had voice chat in there oh boy did things get worse hah

[clever sky]

The core player base just keeps playing and leaves no room for newbies to come in and try things out.

Like... it's kinda like modern sports. Except instead of leagues seperated by age allowing younger players to skill up

They've kinda just thrown everyone in together.

[pearl tangle]

i used to love playing as techies purely for the fucking with people fun of it. not sure if they have added him into dota 2 yet

i saw blizzard is trying to do a proper sports league type thing with overwatch and have teams in different cities and proper salary for players and whatnot

[clever sky]

Will be interesting to see if they can pull it off.

Personally, I think building an more mainstream audience base needs the audience to be able to emotionally attach more directly with the players.

And modern e-sports just doesn't provide that. It attempts to. But ultimately the distance created by the abstraction of the player from their avatars

Means it's going to only appeal to people that can 'get that'.

Where as in sports, a lot of people look up to the player who is also their sporting representation. One and the same.

So... it'd be cool when VR matures and you've got full mo cap

and easily customizable avatars

I mean... current e-sports is more like... advanced real time chess.

[pearl tangle]

yeah i don't really get it because im not a spectator regardless of what it is. I enjoy playing pretty much any sport but i never sit at home and watch them on tv or care anything about the players

[clever sky]

It's got an audience, but not nearly as large as actual sports

[pearl tangle]

but most e-sports players seem like even bigger douchebags than the professional athletes

[clever sky]

Haha...

I wouldn't know, because like you, I don't watch sports!

of any kind!

The last competition event I watched was Alpha-Go vs Lee-Sedol

[pearl tangle]

that sounds like eSports people

[cobalt relic]

esport also has an issue with the fact most people don't have any idea how the game is played

see dota for the perfect "no idea what's happening" game

[hard light]

ah, e-sports douchebags

take all of the ego boost of the acclaim, then attach it to someone with literally zero social aptitude

[clever sky]

@pearl tangle lol. Goddammit you're killing me here! 😛

Alpha-Go is a neural net AI that Deepmind/Google has been working on

And it plays Go, which is like super hardcore asian chess.

[hard light]

Go isn't that hardcore

but it is particularly difficult for a machine to play

it requires a type of reasoning that computers don't really do

[clever sky]

Because when Deep Blue beat Kasparov people were all like - meh, that's just computational power, not real intelligence.

[hard light]

it's more or less the same with Chess, but Chess solvers are raw computational power, like you said

[clever sky]

Even though Chess was held up like the bastion of intelligent activity until that point.

On the other hand, Go isn't a game that can be computationally solved for; as there are more permutations possible than atoms in the universe.

[pearl tangle]

ah gotcha. yeah go is a lot more open than chess is

[clever sky]

By a ridiculous magnitude.

[hard light]

IMHO - are chess players really that good at reasoning, or are they doing the same as solvers, and have basically memorised board states and plays through experience ;)?

[pearl tangle]

yeah same concept as guys that do rubix cubes in 5 seconds

[cobalt relic]

All of the above @hard light

[clever sky]

So anyway, Lee-Sedol is the Gary Kasparov of Go

and people interested in these things were all like - when the machines beat the best human Go players, then we know, we're really at the dawn of real AI.

And of course Alpha-Go beat Lee Sedol in a 5 match line up.

[pearl tangle]

hah i don't think that indicates AI at all though

[clever sky]

4-1 I think.

Well. It's certainly something.

Whatever it is you want to call it.

A significant proof that the field has advanced in a very powerfully robust manner.

[pearl tangle]

its good programming but still not pushing anything on "intelligence"

[cobalt relic]

People call "AI" the stuff that animates enemies in games, so the phrase has no actual meaning unless you define what you consider AI 😃

[pearl tangle]

well everybody in game dev knows that game AI is just a state engine. it's never actually making it's own decision about something

[hard light]

you say dawn of real AI, I say 'evolution of computational ability'. Chances are we'll just get to the point where we have ridiculous computational ability, but not necessarily anything revolutionary in terms of decision making

[clever sky]

I don't think it's particularly fair to call it merely 'good programming'. The people behind it certainly can't play Go to the same level as Alpha-Go.

And it's not doing brute force probability lookups.

[cobalt relic]

But beating Go champions certainly qualifies as a form of intelligence, imho. More so than chess, which was more about analysis.

It requires learning

[clever sky]

Exactly

[hard light]

@clever sky - the Go solver is likely an application that develops itself

in order to do that, those implementing the software need only an understanding of the rules

[cobalt relic]

Self-learning is my personal threshold for "intelligence"

[pearl tangle]

yeah but you don't need to be good at something to create a program to do it well

[clever sky]

So the real programming is in designing the neural net system. Then after that, the programming if you can still call it that, becomes much less like traditional programming and much more like traditional educating.

[pearl tangle]

i would assume its a neural network 1 which has run through thousands of games against good players. haven't looked into it

well a neural net is fairly simple to put together from a programming standpoint. defining the reward system for it is the interesting 1 since with GO you don't really know if you have done a good or bad move for quite some time potentially

[cobalt relic]

Like I said everyone has a different threshold for talking about intelligence. Some people refuse to call anything AI unless it's Vision from Marvel movies

[clever sky]

Anyway.... like someone said above... it's a moot conversation unless you want to define intelligence.

Like... there's a dictionary definition. But there's a broader philosophical argument on the nature of intelligence that continues to rage on even in this age.

[hard light]

I guess it depends on when you can say that a computer rationally made a decision from a given set of inputs

more importantly; without an understanding of those inputs prior to the fact

[pearl tangle]

yeah from a game perspective it's quite different from a scientific perspective where intelligence is essentially a perception of self

or whether that is scientific or philosophic or ethical who knows how you define it

[clever sky]

What we should be careful of when defining intelligence, is not to keep moving goal posts on its definition so as to define intelligence only in human terms.

[cobalt relic]

@pearl tangle would you say a dog has intelligence ?

[clever sky]

Otherwise, we kinda end up missing the possibility of the rise of truly intelligent machines, all while lovingly gazing into our own navels.

[pearl tangle]

yeah i would say a fish has intelligence too because they can learn and react to external stimuli and understand how it affects their life

[cobalt relic]

Why not apply the same threshold for computers, then ?

[pearl tangle]

i had a fish that used to get depressed if i didn't feed him at the right time

you can but the computer doesn't have an awarness of itself. it's not sitting there going "holy shit i hope somebody doesn't turn off the power"

[cobalt relic]

The fish isn't self aware though

[pearl tangle]

can you tell?

[clever sky]

Kinda (not really).

[cobalt relic]

Yeah, you can, it's called a mirror test

[clever sky]

The test for self awareness is recognition in the mirror

[cobalt relic]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-awareness#Animals

Dolphins are self-aware

[pearl tangle]

it avoids pain, it knows what its body parts are, it has an instinct to pass on genes

[clever sky]

Given that children under a certain age will also fail the mirror test...

[pearl tangle]

found this incredibly interesting actually

https://i.imgur.com/oId6Nks.gifv

[clever sky]

I don't think we can say that the mirror test form of self awareness is the critical marker of intelligence.

[pearl tangle]

incredible how quickly the chimp realises how to use it and how the world works with it. better than a lot of 6-7 year old kids i have tested in vr with

[cobalt relic]

Plants have intelligence, too. See sunflowers etc. So it's still a question of threshold.

[clever sky]

What do sunflowers do?

[cobalt relic]

They follow the sun

Well most plants do

[clever sky]

Oh.

Well, I'm with Stranger on this one. It's a matter of degrees.

[pearl tangle]

yeah and open and close and bloom at certain times.

[clever sky]

But to be fair, most people wouldn't recognize that degree of reactivity as 'intelligence'.

But that's kind of the problem!

[pearl tangle]

we have the grass plants in australia which only release their seeds if there have been fires. depends what evolution does though to genes moreso than intelligence

[cobalt relic]

Self-awareness intelligence is kind of a holy grail, just like general AI. So it's a bit unfair to call anything beneath that "not AI", imho.

[clever sky]

And if we're using learning as the bar for intelligence... does that make DNA intelligent? It learns over many generations.

[cobalt relic]

I would say Go AI are intelligence, and chess AI isn't, for example

Because one needs teaching

[pearl tangle]

yeah like moluscs can open and close when they detect currents that indicate a predator nearby. but nothing to actually really understand or perceive that

well you could make a neural network to play chess though too

[clever sky]

So... maybe there are broader forms of intelligence than we intuitively are aware of? But at this point, we're stretching the word so much that it might be better to use another term.

Information processing and transference?

[cobalt relic]

Typical chess AI is just a solver that returns the best move to a given state

It doesn't even need an internal state

though it makes implementation easier

Of course you can create a chess AI that works like the GO AI

[hard light]

There's a reason we call them 'solvers' rather than 'AI'

[pearl tangle]

yeah but nothing is stopping you from training a neural network to do it. the best form of AI is 1 that you can put into different scenarios and it will figure it out

[cobalt relic]

It just won't be better

[pearl tangle]

so you could use the same ai to solve chess as you could to solve go, just like how our brains can learn new tasks all on their own

[hard light]

a piece of software that solves variations of the same problem and nothing else, is a solver

[cobalt relic]

The point of Go is that no solver can be built, so it's a better test of intelligence than chess.

[hard light]

saying no solver can be built is a naive assumption

[clever sky]

@pearl tangle That kind of AI needs to have its own internal motivation systems and feedback loops to cause it to prefer one state over another.

[hard light]

we just lack the computational ability to do it in a reasonable time frame

[pearl tangle]

thats exactly what a neural network is @clever sky

[clever sky]

We don't actually want that kind of AI yet... if we fail to control it... hoo boy.

[pearl tangle]

all you do is give it a reward for doing something. it just needs to figure out what the reward should be for the other task

[hard light]

some of our largest software development companies can't even control their own twitter bots for 24 hours :p

[pearl tangle]

the other 1 that deepmind was doing before google bought them was the 1 that could play any atari game

[clever sky]

Not really. You give it the motivation

[pearl tangle]

that was rather impressive

[clever sky]

It doesn't have intrinsic motivations

You set its goal states.

[pearl tangle]

oh yeah a client came to us today wanting to build a facebook chatbot with 4 different personalities that ties back into their gigantic ass CRM to provide better information to those people.... and they want it done by the 1st of January..

[clever sky]

With humans... our goal states are set through internalized feedback loops

By the 1st of January you say?

Yes, we can deliver it in 1/1/2020.

[hard light]

1st of January, 2020?

[pearl tangle]

a chatbot with multiple personalities....

[hard light]

hah, beaten to it

[clever sky]

Haha. same date!

[pearl tangle]

hmm maybe you are both chat bots

[cobalt relic]

I am definitely not a chat bot

Believe me.

[silver brook]

Having some trouble getting VR Camera position

[clever sky]

I believe you.

Believe me.

I am definetly not a chat bot too.

@silver brook what's the prob

[wintry escarp]

that's what a chat bot would say

[wicked oak]

Zaptruder is a chatbot

i coded him

[clever sky]

He's a good coder. He's know what he's talking about.

[mighty carbon]

where is Palmer ?!

[clever sky]

He's on the Yangtzhe river! Like some sort of toll troll looking for a boys soul.

[wicked oak]

rumors say he has a quite huge pepe style smug now that trump won

[mighty carbon]

Pepe is innocent #pepeslivematters

[halcyon island]

anyone using the new streaming light scenarios in 4.14

[mighty carbon]

not yet

doesn't it work when following Tim's instruction from the forum ?

[halcyon island]

?

[pearl tangle]

did they include examples in their build?

as in did they update the showdown example

[native cedar]

I am a chat booty

[halcyon island]

hmm

http://imgur.com/a/sciS6

i can't seem to fix this issue with baking light maps in 4.14 w/ streaming
normally when i see these squares n terrain it means terrain has been edited since last bake and ij ust bake again
but now with the lights straeming to level it doesnt' work

[mighty carbon]

make a test case, report it as bug on AH

that's what I've been doing for other things

sometimes it was me not doing something right, sometimes it was obscure engine bugs

[halcyon island]

one thing i wonder is

could it be that i have two sets of lightmaps now

since i am baking the new ones in the LI_streamingScenario

but maybe still have some data from the old bakes

r is that crazy

what is AH?

[mighty carbon]

AnswerHub

[clever sky]

Light streaming seems like it needs a better interface.

Bake the light, give me a thing I can use like an asset.

Then I can switch it on and off as needed

... unless that is what it does already, because I haven't researched the issue.

[halcyon island]

does that

[pearl tangle]

i do recall seeing something about 4.14 removing the light baking stuff from the level itself and storing it somewhere else now or i could be thinking of something else

[halcyon island]

you can do that, yes

my map has 190 lightmaps in the LI_mapMorning file

and 0 in the actual map

these are streamed in

this is a good process

however i am now getting artifacts in my lighting build

i don't know why

[native cedar]

road to dynamic lightmap streaming

[halcyon island]

?

[native cedar]

that sentence of mine, it made sense in my brain

[mighty carbon]

Palmer, stop it

[upbeat holly]

Hey guys

Has anyone had experience with UE VR and Unity VR?

Which one do you think is better and why?

[hard light]

what do you mean 'UE VR' and 'Unity VR'?

as essentially they both implement SteamVR?

[mighty carbon]

I am guessing (s)he wants to choose what engine to use for VR

[pearl tangle]

well considering this is a chat room for unreal i would imagine people would be rather biased in here

the oculus forums or the steam vr forums are maybe a bit less biased

[wraith atlas]

where do you all go when you want to request an asset that doesn't exist in the asset stores or on turbosquid/etc. ?

or do you just build it yourself

[halcyon island]

maya

or.. zbrush

[wraith atlas]

it'd be cool if there was an Uber for assets

[halcyon island]

lol

i think if you want to pay to get shit made for you and can pay custom price you will find people pretty easily just posting that

issue is that its prob not worth it for artist if they can't sell it on a store 20 times and you want to pay the turbosquid price

[wraith atlas]

mmm good points

[halcyon island]

like making an awesome car in less than 8 hours

pretty tough

paying less than $20 an hour

pretty unreasonable

thus your min price for car would be like $200

that'd be really cheap in a real production

but prob if u are browsing turbosquid or w/e, seems expensive

[wraith atlas]

right

there're times when I'm working on a project and it'd be so much fast to break out a few of the components / assets / particle effects for others to help with

faster*

[halcyon island]

well yea, it should be more than 2x as fast to have 2 people do it rather than one if their skills are more specialised

you should just get godo enough taht you can find someone to help you

if you are serious about it

[spring pond]

Those services exist, but just at a larger scale

loads of AAA titles outsource art to external firms. Especially the lower-cost, but decent quality Chinese/Indian firms

just look at the credits in a really big game 😃

[halcyon island]

sure at that level its standard

even here in canad

canada

companies just bit on the assets

bid

hollywood makes movie, companise here bid on doing the grunt work

cos of currency/tax breaks

[upbeat holly]

hi

and yea you got what i meant

[wraith atlas]

interesting

[upbeat holly]

yup 😄

and I can confirm what @spring pond is saying

das my joab

So you guys prefer unreal to unity for VR content

why?

[mighty carbon]

@wraith atlas go to DrawCrowd, ArtStation, etc. and find artists you like. Some advertise freelance services (for indies too) . Try Polycount forums. Custom art isn't cheap though.

[wraith atlas]

@mighty carbon awesome thanks for this!

[upbeat holly]

also places like upwork etc

[mighty carbon]

personally, I found almost everything I need for my next project on various asset stores. I don't plan making too many assets myself, because at the end of the day, after long dev cycles I might find myself not making enough money. So, what's the point in wasting time making all that myself?! (for non-VR project)

[hard light]

Upwork is a waste of time

I tested the waters advertising there a while back for a Vive developer

most of the responses didn't have a Vive (and claimed they didn't need to), and a couple of others were using clearly fake names

[mighty carbon]

For VR projects it's a bit tougher as no one really make VR-ready art yet. So it's either getting assets and modifying them or making your own.

[spring pond]

Finding VR devs is hilarious right now

so few people with good experience, we don't even bother with VR specifics, we just assume they will learn that part

[upbeat holly]

yea agreed but....

VR ready art is pretty much the same as game art with more polys etc

(i work in VR)

art side

[hard light]

there are plenty of VR devs, they are however most likely to be engaged with their own projects

[upbeat holly]

yea sure

I got found via upwork tho 😄

but I can understand its a scary place

[hard light]

I'm willing to do contract work myself - but most people are not willing to pay for it, it would seem

(probably because most VR projects are at the lower-budget end of the scale)

[upbeat holly]

well...

yea I again I partially agree

[wraith atlas]

for reference what sorts of rates do you all charge?

[upbeat holly]

Mines $35 a hour

[hard light]

my rates vary, but around £200 per day is pretty standard

it goes up for working on-site away from commutables, and for shorter durations etc

[upbeat holly]

I find I get a lot of work though

cool 😄

£200 a day is a bout $35 a hour

This is standard rate for newbies to the industry

Cant wait to get more xp and level up

[wraith atlas]

lol

cool thanks

[upbeat holly]

some people man make YUGE amounts

[hard light]

I'm pretty experienced - but I haven't found people willing to pay much more than that

[upbeat holly]

Ive seen people making way more......

I think yea it depends on the needs of a company

atm we are in a lull waiting for cpu power to catch up with what we can do

[hard light]

I've been working in VR for about two and a half years now though

[upbeat holly]

but BIG things are coming

[hard light]

(and games for a lot longer)

[upbeat holly]

Sure but it also depends on skill level etc

cool stuff dude

can we see a portfolio etc?

[hard light]

I don't maintain a portfolio anymore since almost all the work I do is under NDA these days

(also, I'm technical, so there's not so much that can be easily portfolio'd, heh)

[pearl tangle]

@hard light ambershee you are a senior developer working only for 200 a day?

[hard light]

aye, work hasn't been forthcoming

[upbeat holly]

ok....I understand my stuff is all under NDA too dayum

[pearl tangle]

ouch

[upbeat holly]

but im working right now, things very exciting

[granite jacinth]

$200/day?

[hard light]

£200

[pearl tangle]

actually im over in london from tomorrow night for a few days. working from amsterdam office at the moment. where are you guys located?

I don't touch anything for under $1200 a day

[mighty carbon]

@hard light & @upbeat holly got links to your portfolios by chance ?

[upbeat holly]

yus 1 sec

[pearl tangle]

actually my hourly rate in Singapore is $350USD

[hard light]

we're up in Manchester, so we're about 3 hours away

[pearl tangle]

ah well then I will not be going that far for a beer hah

[hard light]

aye, it's a bit of a trek, haha

[upbeat holly]

sweet Zoltan!

[pearl tangle]

I am heading to the Epic offices on Wednesday morning to catch up with their enterprise guys there

[upbeat holly]

dude you must be awesome!

have you got a link to your portfolio? @pearl tangle

[pearl tangle]

you are only worth what you can convince somebody else you are worth

[hard light]

Guildford is even farther south; we're about 5 hours away from Epic's offices

[upbeat holly]

Sure thing I understand

[pearl tangle]

yeah im staying in london central but catching the train out there wednesday morning

[hard light]

yeah, makes sense

[pearl tangle]

im like ambershee. majority of my work is hidden away aside from the VR stuff that I do

[upbeat holly]

I also get that I could maybe charge more but I like the current client and want them to succeed etc

[wraith atlas]

thats awesome @pearl tangle - some of their youtube videos on enterprise applications look sweet

what kind of projects do you do?

[upbeat holly]

https://www.artstation.com/artist/pangea

lol 😄

love the way that comes up

[pearl tangle]

i do a range of things. background is more in web development before i started playing around with VR quite a lot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DATHF2bRsqY&list=PLTNzog4U0ELVKsG0A8C8_pg6729u6hfx2 here is my reel from H2 2016 for VR stuff

[upbeat holly]

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc-thread-gallery.php?tid=199618

[pearl tangle]

well less of a reel and more of a playlist from a bunch of things

[upbeat holly]

haha cool

im so excited about the project im on atm

[pearl tangle]

I am keen to find out what sort of things they can help out with on the enterprise stuff if I am going to be forking out the extra licensing for each user to get in on it

[upbeat holly]

we are going to smash stuff up

[wraith atlas]

cool reel

how long did it take you to make the fiji and johnnie walker ones? @pearl tangle

and whats the sort of rough range you quote to a company for those? I'm considering doing some more of this work professionally and interested in how companies are thinking and paying for VR

[mighty carbon]

@hard light so, you got no portfolio online?

[hard light]

no, like I said before, I don't have a portfolio

the past 6 or so years of my work has been under NDA, so there's little point

[mighty carbon]

so 200 GBP a day is for art work or programming work ?

[hard light]

I don't do art

[mighty carbon]

oh

[hard light]

I sit somewhere between design and code

[mighty carbon]

got it

[upbeat holly]

Im the art side

and yea 200 a day but this is the starting rate so 😄

good times ahead 😄

Ambershee is prob working in vfx physics sims etc

that type of thing is a mix of design and code

[hard light]

oh lord no, please no Physics xD

Physics in UE4 is a nightmare, especially in VR

[upbeat holly]

I seen some awesome examples tho 😄

crazy stuff with like car crashes etc

so cool

not my area though

one dayt

I WILL CONQUER

[mighty carbon]

hmm.. Why physics is bad in UE4 ?

[upbeat holly]

I dont think its particularly bad its just difficult

to work in

[hard light]

nah, it's eternally problematic, I hate working with it

[upbeat holly]

the industry is moving fast, physics sims are always improving updating etc which means lots to learn

[mighty carbon]

I recall car physics is horrible and even in 4.14 it's not working correctly. But what about other things? (single rigid bodies, raggdolls, etc.)

[upbeat holly]

I really want to get in using UE for VR, as a personal hobby thing

uh i seen good things for all those including car sims too

some plugins were available

[hard light]

rigid bodies are okay

but there have been so many stupid bugs it's not even funny

for example there was (probably still is) one bug where if you teleported a rigid body, the mesh would lose it's root and just fall off the actor

[upbeat holly]

yea ofc thats the nature of emerging tech they arent neatly packaged 😄

[hard light]

so the mesh itself must be the root

[upbeat holly]

hwahahahaha

yea same on the art side

[hard light]

this isn't exactly emerging tech, this is simple rigid bodies and has been in the engine since day 1 more or less

[upbeat holly]

yea but the code behind it

its probably necessary for it to function right?

[hard light]

the bit where it loses the root is probably something incredibly simple like a one line issue - I've never delved too deep into it, but it really shouldn't be an issue

[upbeat holly]

hmmm well i dont know enough about code to comment 😄

[hard light]

in C++ you can manually reattach the mesh to the root after teleporting it, but in BP you have no such luxury

ah well

this said, I really want to do a fishing rod with the motion controllers if I get time

[upbeat holly]

awww yea lol

[hard light]

I'm not into fishing at all, but it seems like a fun little project that's mechanically interesting

[upbeat holly]

yep

i love the eagle VR sim

they have the whole body simulator thing as well hahaha

looks amazing

you have to flap your arms to fly 😄

[hard light]

hah, that seemed a bit over the top to me xD

[upbeat holly]

you are wrong

Do you hate fun? @hard light

[hard light]

obviously :p

[upbeat holly]

ambershee - Today at 6:46 PM
obviously :p

let it be known

@hard light hates fun.

[mighty carbon]

Palmer, stop it

[upbeat holly]

agreed

[pearl tangle]

@wraith atlas Fiji was a long 1 because of all the creative stuff to go with it and also going over to Fiji to film the video. Actual development was about 5 weeks. Johnnie Walker we also created a daydream/cardboard app as well but that version of the 360 video was another 5-6 weeks build or so

price range pretty varied between the 2 since we also have the creatives and the filming and whatnot. Just on the VR dev for the Johnnie Walker stuff is probably a couple hundred grand

[wraith atlas]

awesome thanks, how many people did it take to do the VR side of both?

[pearl tangle]

i have a full time 3D guy and 1 other full time Unreal Dev.

then another video guy

[upbeat holly]

interesting

[mighty carbon]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/515040 << non-VR, but how the fuck these kind of games become popular and highly rated?!?!?!

[wicked oak]

its selling a shit ton of money

becouse MEME magic

[upbeat holly]

lol

[granite jacinth]

Nah

You ride the coast

It is easy to make money when it is about something big/popular and add a crapton of stupidity and comedy

Children and adults with the mentality of children love it

$$$$

[pearl tangle]

bloody yanks

[granite jacinth]

Other than let's say MSFT Flight Simulator or whatever it is called now, what actual real world sim game is popular?

We have "sim games" like Prison whatever and the Sims

[wicked oak]

40k owners at 3 dollars

[pearl tangle]

yep 100-140k USD

[granite jacinth]

Nice little chunk off change

[wicked oak]

around 80k or so

after steam cut and some taxes

still

holy shit the cash

[pearl tangle]

for what im pretty sure is a template on the unity store just with trumps face on it

[granite jacinth]

Imagine if they had tripled their price

Or gone NMS pricing

But would it really have sold so many at higher prices?

Who knows.

[pearl tangle]

doubtful

id say they are making more money off the trading cards they throw on there

[granite jacinth]

Timing + a little bit of luck = winner

[pearl tangle]

seems like there is actually a lot of people who get cheap games just to get trading cards, so shitty devs throw them in there and then make 5% off every card sale

[mighty carbon]

I miss good ol' days when games were games (around Classic Doom era) and there weren't whole a lot of them on PC

[granite jacinth]

Lol

[mighty carbon]

trading card is a good business indeed

[granite jacinth]

I miss the golden age of Indie Games

[pearl tangle]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/507010/

that has sold the same number at $5

[granite jacinth]

Haha

You guys should make a VR game now avout it

About

And just cash in on stupidity