virtual-reality

[clever sky]

Just implement a good locomotion system and you'll be able to get most of the sense of scale across 😛

[hard light]

the difference between Hololens and Meta is that you can work more closely with the hardware if you want to since you can do it through UWP

Meta is locked to Unity

[upbeat holly]

whats uwp?

[pearl tangle]

hah yeah locomotion stuff works ok for us. Not so great for people not familiar with the tech at all or a bunch of old businessmen

[hard light]

unless they do a plugin for another engine / platform, you're stuck with it

[pearl tangle]

Universal windows platform

[clever sky]

Well... I'd be curious to try a good AR on site experience.

[upbeat holly]

thnx

yea AR is the bomb

[hard light]

UWP = Universal Windows Platform (a complete waste of time)

[pearl tangle]

but unreal does work with it, just need to get the proper 1 for it

[hard light]

there is a branch for it yeah

[clever sky]

But I honestly don't think it'd be as amazing as a lot of people are expecting it to be. A lot of demos from Magic Leap are carefully curated.

And well... Hololens is out and not exactly setting the world on fire.

Good enough to play around with as Zoltan says

[upbeat holly]

ofc

standard industry tactic

😄

[clever sky]

But I think... given that AR kinda relies on mobile computing...

[upbeat holly]

LOOK AT THIS PRERENDERED CONTENT

[pearl tangle]

yeah give it 5 years though and it will be quite incredible

[upbeat holly]

o yea

[clever sky]

it's full potential is going to take a lot longer to reach.

[upbeat holly]

thats why Im so happy that im here in the industry

[pearl tangle]

5 years and the computer in your pocket will be as powerful as our current desktops anyway

[upbeat holly]

building the metaverse

[clever sky]

That's the hope.

[pearl tangle]

and different rendering techiques and software more suited and we are set

[upbeat holly]

I get to tell people in 40 years i was there

• I was there man

[pearl tangle]

look at how quickly things have changed with how we actually run vr stuff. dedicated drivers, different rendering methods, foveated rendering, multi res etc etc

[hard light]

the day the music died :p?

[clever sky]

@naive river I'm all about defining the UI & design paradigms now that we'll be using in the future 😛

[upbeat holly]

Im on the actual 3D content but yea we are in this 😄

[hard light]

we got there with VR, because VR was fairly open, allowing a lot of people to just dig in and do things

[upbeat holly]

yea OS ftw

[hard light]

they also made the kits quite accessible, even if they were a bit shit to start with

if AR wants to get there that quickly, it needs to capture as large an audience and do the same

[upbeat holly]

I think there are some critical niche use cases

[clever sky]

The big companies all want to make it closed as hell

[upbeat holly]

Medicine construction real estate etc

yea exactly more money that way

[clever sky]

Pull off the Apple thing for the next computing paradigm.

[upbeat holly]

They are outta touch though

cant put OS back in the box

[mighty carbon]

Blah blah blah... Magic Leap doesn't show anything because why?!

[clever sky]

I think it's telling that we haven't heard much from Apple about this stuff. Even though it's kinda obvious they're also working on it too.

[upbeat holly]

we have though

you heard???

[pearl tangle]

AR is more for industrial and enterprise usage so its current price is not too bad

[clever sky]

Tech just isn't there yet to show off at a standard they want.

[upbeat holly]

the Apple glasses

[pearl tangle]

magic leap does show stuff

[upbeat holly]

Gonna be AWESOME

[pearl tangle]

they have developer kits too

[clever sky]

Apple Glasses?

[upbeat holly]

yea

google it

They are coming man

[pearl tangle]

you just need to sign a pile of NDA's and pay a shitload more money for magic leap than hololens

[wicked oak]

magic leap does look impressive

[upbeat holly]

cos of the tech?

[wicked oak]

at least all the patents and stuff

[upbeat holly]

yea but dont trust the previews

yea

[mighty carbon]

@pearl tangle have never seen anything online from Magic Leap

[clever sky]

@naive river oh. It's pretty recent news.

[wicked oak]

i think they DO have something super cool

[upbeat holly]

check their site

[pearl tangle]

yeah they dont put it online otherwise the NDA's dont mean shit

[wicked oak]

but they want to drop the bombshell at once

[upbeat holly]

indeed

[clever sky]

But I guess the point still remains... thy're not really showing off anything right now.

[pearl tangle]

they are working with people to create content at the moment

[wicked oak]

go apple style. This is the device, it will be in stores in a few months, preorders open tomorrow

[pearl tangle]

i know people at framestore working on a bunch of things for them and they have the developer kits with a tethered computer

[upbeat holly]

I dont like apple stuff usually but they were right about this, google glass was too intrusive into a persons appearance

looked too aesthetically ugly

people couldnt adopt it without being shamed

that was the big problem

[pearl tangle]

google glass was a test. it paved the way for proper AR

[upbeat holly]

indeed

was awesome

[hard light]

google glass was fine, it was the random hate tirade that killed it early

[pearl tangle]

i refered to it as "supplemented reality" rather than augmented reality

[wicked oak]

google glass was NO AR

at all

it was just a IRL HUD

[hard light]

it wasn't, but it was a decent enough device

[wicked oak]

it also looked dorky and was hated by tons

[clever sky]

It had a niche, but the hate killed it.

[wicked oak]

that camera did nothing good

[pearl tangle]

i did a google glass application for australia post actually a few years back

[wicked oak]

people didnt like the glass guys could be recording you

[clever sky]

But wasn't amazing enough to go beyond a niche.

[mighty carbon]

NDA for Magic Leap might require you to not say bad things about Magic Leap

[hard light]

"Googles Glass looked dorky!"

walks around wearing Hololens

[clever sky]

Like... basically it's evolved into the smart watch.

[upbeat holly]

lawl

[pearl tangle]

yeah nobody cares about smart watches

[wicked oak]

smartwatches, lool

[clever sky]

And people are pretty much meh at smart watches.

[wicked oak]

apple does, and apple fanatics

[hard light]

smart watches are just shit

you can't do anything with a screen that small

[wicked oak]

did you lnow that something like 90% of apple watches were sold the first 2 weeks?

literally no one outside of fanatics got one

[pearl tangle]

samsung in asia was trying really hard to push the smart watch instead of vr and i kept telling them to push vr instead and they were like no no the smart watches are going to be the next big thing, nobody cares about vr....

[clever sky]

@hard light Exactly. Google glass resolution was piss poor too 😛

[hard light]

Google Glass was just a concept product

didn't exactly get pushed for mainstream adoption

[wicked oak]

i have still havent seen a single apple watch around

[pearl tangle]

if somebody made a nice, slim, round, 100m waterproof with a battery that lasts at least a month then i would buy 1

[wicked oak]

there is

pebble time

its like the only smartwatch that might be useful

[pearl tangle]

i hate square watches

[wicked oak]

becouse it doesnt try to be a second smartphones

there is a circle one

https://www.pebble.com/pebble-time-round-smartwatch-features

[mighty carbon]

I haven't worn a watch since I got smartphone

[pearl tangle]

ok yeah that looks like a better idea but still doesn't seem to provide much of a use to me

[clever sky]

I want a smart watch that doesn't use the display for the hands but just normal physical hands.

[upbeat holly]

same 😄

[pearl tangle]

i haven't not worn a watch for 20 years. every single day

[wicked oak]

i think thats pretty much the best you can do with a smartwathc

[pearl tangle]

my current watch has been on my wrist for 7 years and i changed the battery twice

[clever sky]

And then lights up enough to let you do the fancy smart watch stuff.

[hard light]

I used to wear an old swiss watch a while back, but alas, it was stolen when my house was broken into

but that was a proper swiss watch from the 40s, nice timepiece

[wicked oak]

mine broke 😦

it was a very good one, used it for 6 years

how do you say it in english, the "cord"

[hard light]

strap

[wicked oak]

whats its not the face of the clock

ok, the strap is done for

and i dont know where to get replacements

[pearl tangle]

or band

[hard light]

you can replace a strap anywhere

[mighty carbon]

Why do you need watch nowadays?

[pearl tangle]

go to any watch place they will have them

[hard light]

yeah

[wicked oak]

not really

its not a generic shape

[clever sky]

https://kairoswatches.com/watches/

[pearl tangle]

they use generic connections unless yours is something weird

[clever sky]

Like that. Except not stupid priced 😛

[pearl tangle]

still looks like shit though hah

anybody played this 1 in co op before?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/530120

[mighty carbon]

These casual real-life sim VR games are annoying

Has anyone played Solus in VR?

[clever sky]

Yeah

Why do you ask

[mighty carbon]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/313630/

[pearl tangle]

i played around with solus but it was too motion sickness inducing when i did

gonna setup a bunch of the multiplayer type 1s in the office for people

[mighty carbon]

Just wondering is Solus had teleporting locomotion and if it looks as good in VR as in 2D

[clever sky]

Solus has teleportation and looks pretty good in VR

Quite worth while.

Although the game is quite long... and repetitive...

a lot of walking around.

[mighty carbon]

Aye, gotta get it

[wintry escarp]

does anyone sell gearvr adaptors to move some of the weight from your face to your head, more like psvr?

[clever sky]

But honestly, worthwhile even if you only play a bit of it (by a bit I mean a few hours)

[mighty carbon]

@wintry escarp your too picky, damn it

:)

I'd love to play Dishonored 1 and 2 in VR

(Properly adopted for VR)

[wintry escarp]

i couldn't find that cardboard google earth thing on the gearvr appstore

[mighty carbon]

There is none

[wintry escarp]

😦

flying around google earth was best thing on cardboard

[mighty carbon]

Btw, can UE4 do megatextures like IdTech6 so that we can have crap load of textures with only few drawcalls ?

[clever sky]

Not that I know of.

It has HLOD

[upbeat holly]

Im watching this atm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yv1tLjPLok

[clever sky]

Which will automatically atlas the textures on a large amount of meshes.

[mighty carbon]

I just imagined what it would be like walking around in RAGE.... Would be mind blowing IMO

[upbeat holly]

has some great convo about AR and VR Markets

[pearl tangle]

yeah just played around with google earth on the vive its quite impressive

[clever sky]

Especially with decent internet speeds.

[pearl tangle]

the whole mega textures thing isn't that exciting

you can do 8k or 16k textures in unreal if you want

[clever sky]

ADSL2 in Perth is like... yeah, this pop in is... kinda annoying.

Oh well. Guess I'll just sit down on the couch until everything loads up.

[pearl tangle]

move to singapore zaptruder. i get a 980mb sync speed compared to the 3.5mb i was getting in central melbourne hah

[clever sky]

I should.

I'd fit in better in singapore then in australia

ironically.

[mighty carbon]

@pearl tangle Have you played RAGE, Wolf TNO and DOOM? I don't see how uniquely textured world isn't exciting

[pearl tangle]

you can create unique textures quite easily with substance and/or procedural generation in unreal

its just about doing it right.

[mighty carbon]

You can't

[clever sky]

Been asian in a white country is... the experience of mild neglect D:

[pearl tangle]

well being white in an asian country is also interesting

[mighty carbon]

It's not about authoring textures, it's about how engine can use them

[clever sky]

How do you find it? 😛

[pearl tangle]

but after moving to singapore i found out just how racist australia actually is since a lot of my singaporean friends wont ever go back to australia

[mighty carbon]

Megatextures is about that, not about creating them

[clever sky]

Yeah, I'd probably experience a lot more racism, if I didn't sound white like hell.

[pearl tangle]

if you do procedural textures you can get the same kinda thing

well ive had several of them complain that people just yelling at them across the road to go the fuck back where they came from

[clever sky]

That's pretty fucked 😛

[pearl tangle]

without ever hearing them talk or anything. and singapore is an english speaking country anyway so they sound similar enough

yeah too many dickheads in aus thats for sure

[clever sky]

I've been here all my life... haven't experienced that direct level of racism personally.

But then I'm not out and about much. Especially where those kinds of people would go...

[wicked oak]

there is a megatextures plugin for ue4

i dont know how well it works

[pearl tangle]

i grew up around more passive racism. more country side of things. i grew up in a town where the only asian family owned the chinese restaurant and thats about the same as a lot of the small towns in western nsw

[clever sky]

How's your experience been a white guy in singapore?

I'd imagine pretty decent? 😛

[pearl tangle]

yeah doesn't go too badly. still an interesting culture divide. most singaporeans live at home until they are married

religion is more much common than australia

[clever sky]

There's this guy on youtube - the food ranger. White canadian dude travelling around asia eating asian food and speaking mandarin.

[mighty carbon]

@wicked oak what plugin is that?

[clever sky]

Dude gets requests for photos and shit walking around china 😛

[pearl tangle]

hah yeah i have never had that before. in vietnam girls did that to 1 of my female friends though but they are too shy around a guy

[wicked oak]

@pearl tangle how is singapore? i heard it is very safe as long as you arent a delinquient

[pearl tangle]

yeah singapore is 1 of the safest places you can live

people mark their table in a food court by leaving their phone there

[clever sky]

@pearl tangle Understandable given that singapore is expensive as hell and not much land for people to spread out on.

[pearl tangle]

yeah i live in a 1 bedroom apartment that i pay around $4k a month in rent and its worth like $1.5mill usd

[clever sky]

Jesus

[pearl tangle]

singaporeans get cheap housing. like a 2 bedroom place for like $350-400k but they have to get married to be able to buy it

[wicked oak]

thats interesting

so they charge more if you are an outsider?

[clever sky]

You have to be a citizen right?

[pearl tangle]

or be over 35. because by that point the government figures you probably need to get out of your parents house to have a chance at getting laid hah

i would have to pay a 30% deposit to buy a place. so like $500k up front

[clever sky]

Fishsticks!

[pearl tangle]

yeah but you also need to earn below a certain amount combined anyway, sub $10k a month

[clever sky]

Pretty decent system actually.

[pearl tangle]

so i dont know any expat couples that would be living there making below that since companies dont bring people over from overseas for junior roles

[clever sky]

Housing costs are one of the most critical costs in people's lives

[wicked oak]

not bad at all i think

[pearl tangle]

yeah cars are stupidly expensive too

[clever sky]

A pretty good way to do welfare.

[pearl tangle]

but i get a taxi from 1 side of the country to the other for $30

[clever sky]

Well... singapore is only 50km across.

[pearl tangle]

cheapest new car in sing is $110k because you pay a 10 year registration fee which is around $70k and then after 10 years just throw the car away pretty much

[clever sky]

But it also has one of the best public transportation systems in the world.

So.... just foot it and ride the sub. Fitter for it.

Not like Australia D:

[pearl tangle]

well its pretty easy thats for sure. but every train stops at every station, so no express trains if you want to get from 1 side to the other

[clever sky]

Fair call.

[pearl tangle]

but yeah taxis are super cheap. it used to cost me $0.75 to get the train to work too

[clever sky]

What singpoare needs is the hyperloop!

[pearl tangle]

they are meant to be building an express train to Kuala Lumpur but its going slowly

[clever sky]

Fuck yeah, 1300km/h tubes around a 50km wide island!

[pearl tangle]

would be a 45 minute train up there so can easily live in cheap malaysia and work in singapore once that kicks off

other benefit of singapore is the tax

i was hitting 50% tax in australia, I average 8% in singapore

[clever sky]

Well, I guess Singpoare can make most of its money from non-income sources of tax

Like the port authority and shit.

Does it have VAT/GST?

[dusk vigil]

Best food in the world in that area too, I visited KL several times... Could spend a year just eating

[clever sky]

Plus, they've structured it to attract a shit load of foreign investment.

So money flows into Singapore no worries.

[wicked oak]

they were incredibly smart

50 years ago, singapore was nothing

literally nothing

[mighty carbon]

http://www.graphinesoftware.com/products/granite-for-unreal

[clever sky]

But... it's not exactly a model of governance for other larger countries.

[wicked oak]

they got their shit together real fast

[clever sky]

Yeah... pretty good what you can do when you have as close to a benevolent dictator as you'll ever see in our life time 😛

[wicked oak]

they still kill drug dealers and smugglers

they do add MULTIPLE warnings

[clever sky]

Yeah, Singapore isn't some human rights paradise.

[wicked oak]

so if you bring drugs even on the multiple signs with "bring drugs and you will be killed" and STILL you bring them...

[clever sky]

But those things are tolerable given the economic freedoms.

[wicked oak]

well, England added a law to completely dstroy the right of privacy

[clever sky]

You mean the government gets to look at your internet search history?

[wicked oak]

that law that lets every governement part, literally all of them, spy on everyone at once

[clever sky]

internet traffic history.

And then keep the records poorly

[wicked oak]

wich means they will get hacked

even worse

[clever sky]

Exactly.

UK going to go down in a black mailing free for all.

It'll be glorious!

[wicked oak]

UK is going straight into V for Vendetta

[clever sky]

That shit wasn't a movie. It was a time travelling documentary.

[mighty carbon]

So, has anyone tried Granite for UE4 ?

[wicked oak]

nope

i cant use ANY runtime plugin wich has closed source

as i want to do console stuff

editor stuff is fine, but runtime that gets compile with the game, closed source, HELL NAH

and those dlls wont work on ps4

[upbeat holly]

but also bad

because i live there

[wintry escarp]

do you still need to package for etc2, or can you package for astc, I heard that was better

ack, suntemple demo is over 400mb

doesn't work

run suntemple on phone it tells me to plug it into gearvr, then its just black

[lusty tiger]

ok guys ordered the vive during the black friday sale

now cyber monday for cpu upgrade

[wintry escarp]

£100 discount?

[lusty tiger]

yeah 100 off + 100 microsoft gift card

[winged shale]

Doot!

[pearl tangle]

i did the rift on amazon with the similar deals

[mighty carbon]

@wintry escarp you can do ASTC too

[wintry escarp]

unsigned :/

do I put the sig file in C:\GAME_ENGINES\Epic Games\4.13\Engine\Build\Android\Java or C:\GAME_ENGINES\Epic Games\4.13\Engine\Build\Android\Java\assets ?

meh i'll do both

[mighty carbon]

Epic's docs are pretty clear about it

[wintry escarp]

I got wifi adb to work

now I just need a working signed project to test

[wintry escarp]

cries

I can;t believe oculus think that's a reasonable workflow

[mighty carbon]

Why?

[wintry escarp]

theres no way to stop the phone timing out, oculus should have asked for that at least

10mins is longest it will stay on with nothing happening and it can take longer to compile and deploy from ue4

first time ive ever seen a phone where you couldn't disable the time out

[mighty carbon]

Deploy, then copy apk to the phone and install it

[wintry escarp]

bah I was hoping you wree gonna tell me there was a way to stop time out

[mighty carbon]

What's time out? I never had this issue

[wintry escarp]

if phone is untouched for 10 mins it turns off the display and locks itself

[mighty carbon]

Eeh, ok. What does it have to do with deploying from UE4 and copying apk to the phone?

You don't need adb at all, unless you want to debug your app

[wintry escarp]

I got wireless deploying working so I don't need to wear out the usb port

but its a bit slow

cirque de soleil video was pretty good, shame its short

I wonder if the one with the giant hamster wheels in in vr

[wintry escarp]

does rift have the flicker of gearvr? or dies the extra refresh rate remove it

does

[real needle]

I got mixed realty working with unreal engine :D!

[wintry escarp]

with a plugin?

[real needle]

yup

[winged shale]

Write. Up. Now.

@real needle how?

[clever sky]

Nice work @real needle

Now spill the beans!

[real needle]

Haha I will as soon as I finish ironing out the few bugs

and trying to fix an issue currently being that nothing can be dynamically moved infront or behind the player

like there is background vs foreground, but i'm having difficulty rendering those layers dynamically

[clever sky]

Do you need any special equipment for it? Kinect/depth camera?

[real needle]

no

webcam and vive controller

or camcorder/capture card

[clever sky]

Ah. How do you process depth from the web cam?

[real needle]

I dont its static currently

[clever sky]

Or do you assume that the player is on some middle plane?

[real needle]

a little check box on what renders in front

[clever sky]

Ah

[real needle]

ideally i'd use the players position in vr to do that

we'll see

[clever sky]

Yeah that'd be the easiest from the player perspective.

Even if imprecise

Cool cool. Good luck; looking forward to seeing it.

[real needle]

thnx, i might put out a video when i polish it more

i found a guy on github who made a plugin to do it in 4.12 so i forked his code, ported it to 4.14, and im working on improving it

[restive blade]

Would be really neat to see what you got going @real needle

[real needle]

I'll try to record something tomorrow when my capture card comes in, its not recording very well with my horrible webcam.

[winged shale]

@real needle which repo

[real needle]

@winged shale https://github.com/haowang1013/UE4-MixeReality

[winged shale]

would be nice if he included a commit that was the original SteamVR plugin

instead of + everything copied

[real needle]

yeah but im gonna fork it to 4.14 with some improvements and do that so it helps people out

[winged shale]

awesome

[real needle]

its pretty much done

[winged shale]

so proud 😢

[real needle]

i just want to do an official test and i cant with a crappy webcam

37.5 degree fov ftw

[winged shale]

is the SteamVR plugin hermetic from the engine yet?

or does this still require a full recompile

[real needle]

legally i cant distribute the compiled 4.14 steamvr plugin with mixed reality code

so you'll have to compile it yourself

[winged shale]

yeah but does compiling the new plugin require a full recompile of the engine, or can I use it in non-engine fork projects

because ideally it would be such that I can compile the SteamVR plugin on its own without screwing with the rest of the engine, and it would hit a wider audience

[real needle]

no you can use it on the default engine

but you need to compile the engine to compile the plugin

[winged shale]

right..

so what's this legal reason?

just distributing compiled engine source?

[real needle]

im not distributing the full plugin

just 4 classes with changed code

and not compiled

[winged shale]

cool. Please let me know when your repo has the goods!

[real needle]

will do

expect maybe a week

tops

hi, anyone here running afterburner with the vive?

[clever sky]

So what'll be the best cam for mixed reality videos?

GoPro?

[wintry escarp]

no idea, I thought you meant AR

anyone recommend a controller for gearvr?

[real needle]

@clever sky sony handycam or canon vixia hf r70 + an hdmi capture card

[clever sky]

@real needle Is that what you're using?

Or is that something that people have figured out works great for this stuff? 😛

[real needle]

@clever sky no they are coming in tomorrow

ive heard good stuff tho

[clever sky]

Ah. So that's when you'll be showing it off 😃

[real needle]

Here's what I got so far, its pretty rough, but not bad for a webcam. also dont have a greenscreen yet so im just showing off controller overlay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkfLgqGsPt4&feature=youtu.be

[winged shale]

Bad. Ass.

[wintry escarp]

£55 for a bt controller? they must be on crack

[clever sky]

I made a virtual watch!

😛

[real needle]

Okay this shows the limitation with this system and depth

https://youtu.be/e_rXaXoB-0Y

greenscreen still crappy but if anyone has any ideas on how to get around the depth issue let me know

[clever sky]

That's pretty cool stuff.

Bit rough around the edges, but promising as hell!

Depth issue... ummm... use a depth camera? 😛

[real needle]

hmmmm

its probably rough because im using a 720p webcam

[mighty carbon]

@wintry escarp I don't use USB. There is an app from Samsung that lets you transfer files via WiFi

It's called SideSync

Install it on your PC and your phone

Sync, and then simply copy apk to your phone, run it on your phone and off you go

A way much faster than using adb

[wintry escarp]

I'm transferring builds via wifi

[mighty carbon]

Yea, but when using adb it takes forever

[wintry escarp]

doesn't really help with the gearvr since you need to run the app, which can only be done manually by removing the phone from the gearvr

they don't appear in the gearvr lobby program

[mighty carbon]

No, but they appear in your Apps

[wintry escarp]

but you cant access the normal phone desktop while its plugged into the gearvr

[mighty carbon]

So when you run it, the phone will tell you to insert it into Gear VR

[wintry escarp]

which means youre still plugging it in and out of the gearvr

[mighty carbon]

That's the only way

What I am saying that you don't need adb to get apk from PC to your phone

And once you get your TouchPad working, you can do the rest of your work solely on PC, only occasionally testing your app on Gear VR

[wintry escarp]

you got a bt controller?

[mighty carbon]

Year, but it's a crappy one

I don't use it

I am planning on getting XBOX 1 S gamepad

[wintry escarp]

from google pages I found that only works with mincecraft at the moment

[mighty carbon]

No, it works with anything that supports it

So, if you make your app to support it, it will

Unless UE4 doesn't support it

[wintry escarp]

i thought the idea was it appeared as a normal gamepad to ue4/unity

hmmm i only copied the apk and not the obb file, and it ran

[real needle]

will the kinect 2 interfere with vive tracking?

[clever sky]

@real needle Doesn't seem so. @modern lantern demoed Kinect 2 motion capture a month or so ago

Dammit antidamage, why you leave? D:

[real needle]

oh heck yeah! I might have figured out how to get depth into the ue4 Mixed Reality then!

[clever sky]

Personally, I think it'd be even more awesome (for marketing purposes) if we could somehow do full body motion capture and drive avatars

[real needle]

Kinect just isnt good enough to have stable tracking

[clever sky]

Yeah. Oh well!

[real needle]

But the idea is, use kinect to get a depth pass of the player so that we can overlay them on meshes better

[winged shale]

Antidamage left?

[clever sky]

Maybe. Haven't seen him for a week or so

And @modern lantern isn't coming up with his avatar...

if that means anything.

Plus, a bit before the last time I saw him, he was cussing out <he who shall not be named>

Went on a whole tirade about how that guy was driving people away, and none of the mods were doing anything about it 😛

[real needle]

dammit

kinect plugin is still on 4.13

and no source

[clever sky]

D:

Well that sucks

[fresh laurel]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s

[real needle]

if anyone is able to find me a way to get kinect depth input into ue4 i would be very greatful 😛

[jagged vale]

iirc owlchemy used a stereo camera and specifically ruled out kinect

for MR

[real needle]

yeah thats true, getting video input into a depth mask is just a little above my head

some people however have used a kinect 2 with vive successfuly

[jagged vale]

i can't remember their reason, might be worth finding that out

[real needle]

well i know that if you try to use it for mixed reality without a greenscreen its terrible

really pixely around edges

[jagged vale]

yeah that'd be expected, they use a greenscreen though with the stereo

[real needle]

yup, thats what we are going to have too, but im not exactly sure how to get camera depth working properly

the kinect plugin looked promising but its closed source and is still on 4.13

it had a depth output which faded from black to white based on how far objects were, and i was planning on blending that with the mixed reality mask outputs for OBS

[mighty carbon]

@Zaptruder Palmer got Antidamage?

[wintry escarp]

nowhere here has the steelseries, might try the xbox1 s controller

bollocks, no shops here have xbox1 s controllers either

just xbox1

[wintry escarp]

gnighty

[balmy inlet]

@dmkiller11 Which kinect plugin is that? I just finished cleaning up the first version of our kinect point cloud streaming/visualization plugin (requires patched unreal engine). We'll use it for mixed reality research. (Proper first person mixed reality, not the green screen recording version).

[pearl tangle]

What do you mean first person mixed reality?

You mean just using the Kinect for background removal rather than greenscreen?

[native cedar]

Hey guys, I am having a bit of an issue in VR. Some shadows, some reflections (cubemap, speculars) and other effects kind of change as I turn my head up and down, left and right, etc.
It's been a while since I had this issue , does anyone know anything about it? I suspect it's due to the camera orthoprojection thing or something like that.

[balmy inlet]

@ZoltatJr Like this https://youtu.be/Ghgbycqb92c

[real needle]

@dsjolie#7091 the Kinect4U plugin

@balmy inlet could you make me a plugin that exposes the depth feed?

[pearl tangle]

You can just grab the Kinect core and drop it straight in to the engine

There is also another older plugin somebody else made for unreal that was open source you shoukd look for that

[real needle]

Hmmm I'll look for it

[pearl tangle]

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?389-Kinect-4-Windows-v2-0-Plugin

[real needle]

Thanks!

[real needle]

I found this: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/14tFTzj6t3ECmPML81QqDb3FcgSCzvOQ-r8S8gg4loDg/edit#slide=id.p

any thoughts?

[winged shale]

huh, so this person is doing the compositing within the unreal engine

but how do you put a render target on the output window?

[real needle]

I'm already doing that

I just gotta find a webcam plugin

[winged shale]

I've been shitting the bed trying to do that

[real needle]

and understand his code

[winged shale]

ffmpeg?

[real needle]

no clue what that is

[winged shale]

https://www.ffmpeg.org/

@real needle but how are you setting a render target to another output window?

[real needle]

take a look at the 4 classes in these folders

https://github.com/haowang1013/UE4-MixeReality/tree/develop/Engine/Plugins/Runtime/Steam/SteamVR/Source/SteamVR

[winged shale]

✅ thanks

[real needle]

gonna try to use opencv

[winged shale]

good idea

[native cedar]

which one was the proper screen percentage for high end top quality without stupid performance loss on VIve yet? 220?

[real needle]

@winged shale got the webcam feed in game to a render target

[winged shale]

with openCV

?

also that's sick

can't wait to scope that diff

[real needle]

for some reason its eating up performance though

but yeah with opencv

[zenith charm]

See if I can get any input here, pretty much editing in the VR template to start my project and nothing was adjusted in terms of the teleport works or anything like that but when I start the game the height of my headset becomes the floor height pretty much and everytime I teleport it makes it 0 in the Z. I've looked at both the template (which works like it should) and mine is not changed, anything I should look into first to see what the heck is going on,

Think it would be as something simple that it is reseting the position to 0,0,0 but its all the same as the vr template

[real needle]

so whenever I use this the game caps at 30fps

not sure what the issue is

wooo i figured it out

for some reason unreal engine caps the fps to whatever camera you use

so running my webcam through xsplit and setting it to 90fps works

[mighty carbon]

Is 3rd party mixed reality plugin coming to marketplace? :)

[real needle]

Maybe just free 😃

[balmy creek]

I'm having a strange issue with a VR project.

When I enter VR preview to test it, I seem to be spawning two pawns somehow.

When I put on the HMD, I'm controlling a copy of my pawn that's positioned quite a distance behind where it should be.

But I can see the correct pawn out in front of me - my movements are even mirrored to it - it's really confusing.

I'm also sick this weekend, so forgive me if I sound unintelligible. lol

Let me see if I can get a screenshot somehow.

[balmy creek]

Eh. Can't really get a good screenshot of it. 😦

[zenith charm]

Same thing here, Nick

[wintry escarp]

yay, XSI rules

[balmy creek]

I just solved the issue by switching from an instance of my pawn to a PlayerStart actor.

[zenith charm]

Love me some XSI 😛

[mighty carbon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFC2kCc5xdY << new game for Gear VR.. Looks like it was made with Unity, again :/

[wintry escarp]

I noticed last night that you can launch a unity game straight from the editor into the gearvr across wifi, no need to package then install

[wintry escarp]

hopefully ue4 will sort that out

I can see people using unity just for the ease of use, even though its less capable than ue4

[zenith charm]

Reset Orientation and Position isn't supposed to 0 out the Z right? found out thats my main issue, if I use it instantly the headset is 0,0,0 instead taking account the floor level. only fixes it once restart Unreal O.o

well 0 only in Z I mean* not 0,0,0

Oh I guess so lol

Had my VR pawn and vehicle, I was using the reset ori/pos once I posses it to be in the seat and camera for it, but then possesing back my VR pawn was the issue and headset would be on the floor

fun times

[sturdy coral]

@real needle there is a kinect plugin on the forums, I put instructions there on how to make it compile with newer versions. I did this with it and now have it in game as well and not just for mixed reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T3o1DWa3O4

the plugin on the forums isn't very optimized, had to write one from scratch to make it work in game without lagging everything. I think it was blocking the game thread.

[digital marlin]

Would it be a stretch to think that the next few iterations of Unreal would have a kinect-sort of full scale body thing included?

[wintry escarp]

i thought Kinect was dead

[digital marlin]

Well I don't mean specifically the kinect, but the tech behind it

[real needle]

@sturdy coral Ok, thanks i'll take a look.

[zenith charm]

Ok quick question and I'll stop buggin` 😃 how the heck are you suppose to handle Z height of the HMD if people are different heights.. the guide epic has says you should edit the Z height (-110) on what feels good for you but that if someone is taller/shorter than me its going to be off, using a fixed number allows the reset ori/pos to work but itll be skewed for anyone not my height. is this a really simply issues I'm just not getting?

simple*

[real needle]

get them to calibrate it at the beginning if your game @zenith charm

[zenith charm]

Kinda testing that now, I'm guessing I would the current height of the player and adjust parent of the VR camera (in the examples - VROrigin)? 😃

Ok I think that is working actually

I knew a few games did it but couldn't find any real info on a proper setup with stuff like this (different heights)

[real needle]

Well I bought the wrong capture card

so the mixed reality is gonna be a few extra days

[hard light]

Is there something new you have to do to get motion controllers tracking in 4.14?

Previously I would just add a motion control component and parent whatever to that (usually a mesh), and it just worked

but I have two projects in 4.14, and in both cases, the controllers aren't being tracked

[wicked oak]

strange, it works fine for me

have you make sure that they have the proper controller ID?

[hard light]

singleplayer, so ID is 0

[clever sky]

All my stuff is been tracked fine.

[balmy inlet]

@sturdy coral I've seen this video before but I don't think I ever got around to checking the Kinect plugin out. Could you post a link to the forum post?

@sturdy coral Is the point cloud rendering included in this plugin?

@real needle I would have to change it to remove the need for a custom version of Unreal Engine and I don't have any time to support it. I can tell you I did base it on OpenCV and Freenect2 though. The key trick that got me around several issues was to make a "interface library" to isolate Unreal Engine from OpenCV, and expose the needed functionality via a DLL. At least a few months ago there were some strange compilation and memory management issues when integration OpenCV directly into an Unreal Engine plugin.

[real needle]

@balmy inlet okay thanks, I think I'll try using a kinect to depthmap a world position offset from a webcam material input that opencv brings in, and render that on a plane with the material horrizontally flipped always facing the camera attached to the HMD

[balmy inlet]

@real needle Sounds good. Good luck! 😃 I would be happy to hear about your progress.

I'll let you know if/when our work ends up being easily reused.

[real needle]

@balmy inlet Thanks, this system, if done correctly, would also allow for lighting in game 😃

@muchcharles#2724 Do you know if the kinect plugin on the forums works with 1,2, or both?

[pearl tangle]

just kinect v2

kinect 1 is too rubbish

@hard light fix your controllers yet? Is the basic vr template working for you in 4.14?

[real needle]

ugh i dont have the adapter for the 2

[pearl tangle]

adapter?

oh yeah they stopped making the 1s for windows and make you buy the xbox 1 with an adatper on the newer 1s?

[wicked oak]

im preparing VRMultigames to publish it on Oculus Store at Touch launch

for free

also ill upload patch to steam version

ill use it to do that stuff on a simpler project before doing DWVR

[pearl tangle]

whats your recommendation on the number of cameras to have it work well since you were focussing on room scale previously?

[wicked oak]

fully depends on the game and the size

[pearl tangle]

just noticed the commercial license 1 up on there too

[wicked oak]

2 frontal cameras is fine for all front-facing games

if you do want vive style roomscale, you use 2 cameras, but in opposite corners

that if you have space like vive minimum space

if you are going to use the "big" area space, then 3 might be good

[pearl tangle]

how have you found the 2 camera opposing corners setup compared to vive? I have only tried with 2 front facing 1s and just felt very restricted compared to the vive

definitely 1 of my apps I can convert to rift without any issues since its a guided experience so the 2 front facing 1s should be fine so il give that 1 a crack once the controllers turn up

[wicked oak]

fairly similar

but it has one main issue

the controllers are smaller, so oclussion is a bit easier

and the cameras have lower FOV

another issue is that the oculus cable is quite short

you gonna need something to make it longer

[pearl tangle]

yeah that was my main issues with it. but also i have gotten so used to the vive that going back to the constraints of the rift felt really constraining to me but probably not so much for people that aren't vive users i suppose

[wicked oak]

the controllers and headset by themselves are better

much more confortable

[pearl tangle]

i did find the controllers rather comfortable but they are definitely more complex to pick up and play than the vive so i don't see me using the touch controllers for events. more like learning to use a game controller again compared to the pick up and play of the vive wands

wish the vive had the integrated headphones though

[wicked oak]

the headphones is one thing that allways gets forgotten, but its SO important

rift headphones and microphone are better than my headphones and microphone...

vive microphone isnt nearly as good

[pearl tangle]

yeah i was running an event in barcelona a couple weeks ago. got there and my headphones had 1 ear that had broken during shipping. luckily I had a pair of wireless beats with me to use for it. the wireless 1s are definitely handy to stop worrying about the cable at least

i haven't tried playing around with the rift microphone but i haven't really had any issues with the vives mic

[wicked oak]

wait, i was there too

wich event

[pearl tangle]

was doing 1 at Utility Week and another 1 at Workday Rising

[wicked oak]

ah, then nothing

i was at Barcelona Games World

[pearl tangle]

doing vr stuff or is that board games and the like?

[wicked oak]

http://store.steampowered.com//app/500360

this is VRMultigames

i updated the screenshots with the ones i made for Oculus store,

but its bugged, thats why past screenshot 5 its all "load fail"

somehow steam didnt delete the old ones

i made that game in 3 weeks, as a market test

it got me 4 oculus headsets and 2 Touch sets, so im fine wich what i got from it

[pearl tangle]

ah you were there the week before me

hah pretty handy then. i don't make distributable games so Oculus wont give me a damn thing still

[wicked oak]

that was exactly WHY i made vrmultigames

when i published it on steam

i had my Vive for 1 month

i wanted to see how people react to those 3 minigames, and use it to catch the attention of oculus

plus the whole "how many people will see it" thing

for example, i ended up adding a toggle for the movement

it was dash style only by default

but some complained so i added blink style

[pearl tangle]

yeah handy being able to throw the stuff in there quickly now. how was the current process for the vr game submission on steam? was looking into throwing some of our stuff up on there for free but we would need to optimize a lot since we designed just for our 1080 event machines

[wicked oak]

no review whatsoever

youi email valve "hey i got a vr game" and they create a steamworks application for you

no greenlight, no review, no nothing

you dont even need to send them screenshots

[hard light]

@pearl tangle - haven't fixed it, but it seems flakey. If I restart the editor I get the controls back

seems to be dropping out for some reason :/

[wicked oak]

for vr multigames, i didnt even ASK for the steamworks aplication

yet they still gave me one

[pearl tangle]

yeah i knew it was very easy at the moment but thats definitely keeping it open to too much shit

[wicked oak]

of course

oculus does review

valve doesnt

[hard light]

yeah, it's absolutely saturated with complete shit at the moment

[pearl tangle]

i guess il throw up some of our stuff anyway. which 1 was their email for review, didn't really see the details on my steam dev dashboard easily

[wicked oak]

there is no greenlight on oculus store, but they do review games

[pearl tangle]

@hard light sounds like a steamvr issue there actually. 4.14 should have fixed the launching of steam vr when you fire it up but depending on how long it takes to load it can still freak out

[hard light]

one 'VR' game I tried was literally floating in a skybox, looking in a direction and pulling a trigger

[wicked oak]

[e-mail]

[hard light]

and yeah, it's probably a steamvr issue, but I don't have this issue in 4.13

[wicked oak]

its honestly tempting me so much to just do that

keep doing vrmultigames style stuff, but sell them

instead of putting them for free

[hard light]

you have the time and skills to put out something half decent - I would do that

the Vive audience is begging for half-decent content at the moment

[pearl tangle]

yeah sell it for a couple bucks at least covers your time to sit there a little bit

[hard light]

simple games with a decent quality bar can rack up a fair few buyers

[wicked oak]

i made vrmultigames free, but i kinda shouldnt

[hard light]

the last thing the store needs is more minigames and shovelware, hehe

[wicked oak]

i did becouse i knew it was just 3 unpolished prototypes

[hard light]

nah, vrmultigames being free isn't a bad idea

[wicked oak]

but seeing the rest

i should have charged 5 bucks for it

[hard light]

you can now use that as a marketing tool for your not free games

[wicked oak]

yeah, its what im going to do

[hard light]

in future updates, push information about the new stuff 😃

[wicked oak]

its what im going to do when i put the DWVR store page up

[hard light]

hehe

I'm looking forwards to getting some time to myself in December

[pearl tangle]

yeah at least you get a bit of a following from it

[wicked oak]

fun fact

[pearl tangle]

you could always throw some advertising in there too as long as it's just as part of the game then it can work alright

[wicked oak]

it has 80-90% the players Accounting has

[hard light]

gonna start prototyping a concept for a VR adventure game called 'Super Awesome British Fishing Adventure' xD

[wicked oak]

players total in vrmultigames is wrong, btw

its more around 27k people says steamworks

[hard light]

player total in most can be quite wildly wrong

[wicked oak]

its quite accurate here

like spot on accurate

[hard light]

I mean on that website

[pearl tangle]

have you considered adding trading cards or achievements to it? The trading card stuff can add a decent little cash injection from the trades

[hard light]

I know for a game I worked on it's out by something like 200%

that's not a bad idea, actually

[wicked oak]

i have no artist

to do the cards

but thats a good idea

[hard light]

it probably won't be much, but it's something

[wicked oak]

i should have done it

its too late now

[pearl tangle]

yeah just hire a freelance designer to throw together some for it

[wicked oak]

game is barely played anymore, becouse it hasnt got a new minigame after launch

[hard light]

just do it anyway and accept the slow burn

[pearl tangle]

add in trading cards and achievements and there seems to be tonnes of kids who still just get games for those

[hard light]

the Vive isn't going anywhere and new buyers will always want new content

[pearl tangle]

I wonder if steam has a way to do a DLC thats purely a donation?

[wicked oak]

the thing is that cards need a bunch of stuff done

[hard light]

some people literally pick up games for the trading cards (can free games have trading cards, actually?)

[wicked oak]

its not just the cards themselves

[pearl tangle]

yep i just looked into it actually

[wicked oak]

its a load of things

[hard light]

Steam does not have a pay what you want option

[wicked oak]

you need badges, you need emoticons, you need profile backgrounds...

i wanted to add them to Deathwave

[pearl tangle]

yeah but could still do a free version and a DLC pack that adds nothing at all for $1-$5 or something. or maybe a $1 DLC, $5DLC and $10 DLC?

i bet you could get all that done for under $500

[wicked oak]

i thought of adding multiplayer

like making the lobby multiplayer, and adding multiplayer bow game

but there is already rec room or others, and i dont think it would be too successful now

but selling cosmetics can be a good idea

just adding proper MP takes a while

i do have MP for DWVR, but its still very early

[pearl tangle]

yeah rec room is actually quite good fun

[hard light]

I don't know if you'd get a return on investment for $500

[pearl tangle]

ok seems like you might need to add in game transactions to be able to add trading cards in. maybe thats how it can be the donation system in game

well hes got 50k downloaders now right?

create 10 trading cards, max of 5 drops means 5 trades per person

lets assume 50% of players participate in it so 25000 people *5 trades

125k trades. Average card value of $0.10 as a high estimate. 10% staying with developer

thats $1250

seems conceivable to make it back relatively easily, especially since once they are in there the download rate will probably go up a bit

add in the paid DLC "donation" system to be elligible and you may make a few bucks from that as well and then it's just a sit back and do nothing type thing from the cards at least

[hard light]

I think assuming 50% of current players is way too high

I would assume 5% or less

people are also less inclined to buy cards if they come from larger sets

at around 6 cents per card, the developer likely sees 1 cent

(1 cent for Valve, 1 cent for the developer is the minimum, the rest goes to the seller)

[pearl tangle]

well then doesn't matter if the value goes sub 10c then i guess

i would still think that more than 5% of players would sell their cards though. wouldn't think 95% of people just leave them sit in their inventory if there is a few bucks to be made from them

[hard light]

yeah, but with my numbers you're looking at $125 as a top-end estimate

[pearl tangle]

maybe 20% is closer

well lets say yours is the low end estimate and mine is the high end :p

[hard light]

and nah, the majority of players just ignore the trading cards, or they've already played the game and aren't coming back to it

honestly, the number will be around 5%, if that

[pearl tangle]

oh i didn't expect he would get the original 50k that are bored with it to come back but then next 50k are probably more likely since they will just see it pop up and probably want to get rid of it

i cant find any stats on trading card trades and sales actually

should put together a cross sectional study on some regular and vr games and see what things are actually like since we are just pulling numbers out of our asses at the moment

[hard light]

a lot of people just ignore their inventory entirely

[pearl tangle]

yeah but i would still definitely be keen to see some charts

i like my data too much

also UK is doing some good investment stuff at the moment. going to be submitting 1 of my software applications through to try and get some investment. they just announced another 9mill GBP in investment funds for this energy industry stuff

[wicked oak]

i still want to do cards for DWVR steam version

but basically that, i dont have cards in deathwave or vrmultigames becouse hiring someone to do them would be more expensive than what i would get

that for sure

[pearl tangle]

yeah definitely seems like achievements and trading cards can boost things a bit. worth trying out anyway to see how it goes if you have a cheap game. i was quite surprised from seeing forum things about how many kids wanting achievements and trading cards in games all the time. never really understood why anybody would care about achievements. maybe if you earnt back 10% of your game purchase from completing all the achievements or something then i would care hah

[wicked oak]

might make an announcement for an artist to do that and he gets 30% of the money from card sales

[pearl tangle]

sems like a zero risk way for you to do it. even if you gave 100% of the card sales away to boost the game sales potentially could work out alright

[hard light]

people want trading cards because the badges you earn affect your steam account's abilities

a basic account can only have something like 20 friends, as an example

level it up a few times, and that number becomes a lot higher

[pearl tangle]

i dont even need 20 friends on steam.

and i had steam way before they had that restriction anyway so im assuming they didn't cull friends from peoples lists who already had them when they added the trading cards right?

[hard light]

yeah, I doubt they would cull existing friends

it's the levels that control how many friends you can have, so it's not strictly tied to trading cards

[wicked oak]

i got spammed by steam collectors with vrmultigames

[hard light]

but trading cards = badges = XP = levels

[wicked oak]

they wanted to get a free key becouse that way it stays on the profile

[pearl tangle]

the game is free anyway so why would they need a free key?

[wicked oak]

becouse that way it stays on the profile

i got annoyed after 3 of them, so i started telling them to pay me 5 dollars for the key

they stopped annoying me

[pearl tangle]

what do you mean stays on the profile?

[wicked oak]

this guys were collectors

[hard light]

I think some free games have a habit of dropping out of accounts when uninstalled?

[wicked oak]

1500+ games

yes, they do

[hard light]

kind of stupid, tbh, but yes, it does stop people just adding every free game to their account

[pearl tangle]

hah so they are just getting the free games but never installing them to try and act like they have a shitload of games?

[hard light]

seems that way

[wicked oak]

yes

[pearl tangle]

i would prefer to not have my game count so high. makes me realise how much money i waste on games..at least they are a tax deduction for me haha

[hard light]

IIRC, if you actually play the game for more than a few minutes, it stays with your account

hmm, easy way to test this actually

no, no it does not, regardless of hours

silly

play a game for 100+ hours, and it disappears from your account when uninstalled

[pearl tangle]

if its a free game

dont quite get why people would care. they haven't really collected it if its a free downloadable game with no physical counterpart

thats like saying i collected every NES game because i downloaded the roms

[wicked oak]

they want the +1 in the profile

[pearl tangle]

holy crap im nearly pushing 1k with my games too

my steam marketplace sale costings

[radiant cairn]

Yo has anyone here done large scale scenes before? Should I need to know somethin crucial?

[wicked oak]

if your game is SP, you can use world recentering

if your game is MP, you have around 5-10 kilometer radius from center

more than that it gets bugged

also, if its large scale, it will take a bit to load, so prepare a loading scene

[sturdy coral]

@balmy inlet this is the plugin: https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?389-Kinect-4-Windows-v2-0-Plugin

no point cloud stuff built in, but it can give you a depth texture

[balmy inlet]

@sturdy coral Thanks!

[mighty carbon]

People do like trading cards and devs do get surge in players activity when trading cards are released. You also get a decent kickback from trading fees.

Also, tradings cards don't require any modifications to the game. It's all done via dashboard in your Steam account. Just need to make art assets required.

It also seems that people don't generally give a damn if your assets look AAA or not. As long as card and badges look decent enough, people will go for it. Maybe one of the backgrounds can look good too, just to create a better incentive

[jagged vale]

@wicked oak i'm sure i read in a recent engine update, maybe 4.13 even, that they made world origin shifting work in MP

[spring pond]

I put my account into that thing that tells you what your steam account would cost to buy. I think I'm like $4900 at regular price 😮

[mighty carbon]

nice

[hard light]

@spring pond - my account is something like $8000 xD

(in reality I doubt I've spent 1/10th that)

[spring pond]

same, tons of humble packs

I think i also bought some "everything telltale has ever made" thing for $40

There are also all the free VR-dev games

acutally thats only 3-4 things

[graceful junco]

Does anybody here have some experience with the built-in subtitle system using Dialogue Waves? I can successfully spawn a dialogue. The spoken text from the dialogue wave is printed on the bottom of the screen. Is there a way to print the subtitles to a UMG widget instead? Or access the text from the dialogue waves in BP? I want to render the subtitles attached to a motion controller, not on the bottom of the screen.

[wicked oak]

sent oculus an application for VRmultigames Oculus Store edition

submitted for review after all images are done and build updated and stuff

[jagged vale]

@spring pond mine is only $523, I'm ashamed

[mighty carbon]

how do you check what your Steam account worth ?

[hard light]

@graceful junco - that system isn't really meant to work in VR. I don't think I'd do subtitles, they just don't really work

it's hard to read something glued to the bottom of your eyes

@mighty carbon - just google it, there are loads of sites that do it

[graceful junco]

Well, I've got a character in my game who talks. Currently I'm trying to figure out the best way to have him play an animation, play a sound file and print the text to a 3D widget attached to a controller. Doing all that in itself is no problem. I can do that in any BP. I just saw there is already a built-in system to handle dialogue, so I thought that was the best way to do it. It works fine, even allowing for localization of sound and text. The only issue is the text needs to be output somewhere else. I just had a look at the DisplaySubtitle funtion in the engine code. It seems like all that's needed is to access the SubtitleText variable in a umg widget. Sadly, I don't know C++, so I'm not in a position atm to actually do that myself. :/

[wicked oak]

there are games wich have subtitles on VR

you need to make them not on the center of the camera, but something like 2/3 or 3/4, use a half transparent black background in white letters

quite big white letters

for actual best way, you would do a Render Layer with them, ue4 does them i both Oculus and Vive, but i havent tried it or got it working

that way they get timewarped well

and i think you can increase their resoluion

this was discussed by Carmack himself

[graceful junco]

So what's current best practice for subtitle location? I assumed attached to a motion controller would be nicer than attached to the hmd. Am I mistaken?

[hard light]

if the game's art style supports it, have you considered speech bubbles?

[wicked oak]

attached to motion controller is kind of a huge nope

[mighty carbon]

why do you want subtitles ?

[wicked oak]

unless your game does have an use for it, like if it was a scifi game and it was some kind of hologram thing

[graceful junco]

Well, you're not really looking at my NPC when he talks. So displaying the text next to him doesn't sound right. You would have to stop what you're doing and turn your head towards him. Also he might be too far away to read the text easily.

[wicked oak]

like if you constantly use the hand controller for HUD or info

then use screenspace text

just lock it to the VR camera, and use a layer

oculus themselves do that

[mighty carbon]

well, if I am talking and whoever I am talking to doesn't look at me in real life, I consider it damn rude 😃

so, why should VR be different ?

[wicked oak]

subtitles are neccesary

what if your player isnt english native

you NEED subtitles

subtitles lets you do different languages later

and if its only english subtitles, it still helps a bit

[mighty carbon]

I would dump important conversation into a log book and let user read it if they want to

@wicked oak either use native speaking voice over or don't do it. Subtitles in VR is 😫

[graceful junco]

I'm working on a puzzle game. This NPC is explains how the game works and humors you with random remarks while you solve the puzzles.

[mighty carbon]

then you really want actual voice

[graceful junco]

Yes

[wicked oak]

you should still do subtitles, leave the option

[mighty carbon]

sometimes humor doesn't really get across nicely in text

[graceful junco]

but also have subtitles somewhere

[mighty carbon]

I'll tell you this - most people who will use VR understand English quite well

[graceful junco]

So you're saying better lock it to the hmd than the controller. And using the built-in system doesn't currently work for VR without meddling with the code?

[mighty carbon]

better release in English, re-invest into actual voice over later

[wicked oak]

i THINK it doesnt work non-vr

but you can try

and see what happens

maybe it does work and we all get baffled

[graceful junco]

Well yes the game will be in english and yes, I also assume people who play VR games are generally fluent in english. Displaying subtitles somewhere isn't really any work though, so yeah, definitely also subtitles.

[wicked oak]

anyway, ima get out, so bye

[mighty carbon]

I just find it breaking immersion

[graceful junco]

in general or when locked to the hmd?

[silk lodge]

@graceful junco lots of people in asia are using vr

[mighty carbon]

@graceful junco For example, if you dump info into a log./journal you can view at any time, it seems less immersion breaking as it's something closer to reality. It doesn't distract you from seeing the world, you can read it later if you have to.

You could have it as part of your virtual HUD, like if you are wearing Google Glass in VR world or helmet. But I bet user will find him/her-self focusing on that instead of the world. It's like watching a move with subtitles - I find myself reading more than watching the movie.

But that's just me.

[graceful junco]

Yes, I agree.

I can also easily add several options in the menu to display the text in different locations.

That's not really an issue.

[pearl tangle]

China has a lot morr people playing vr then anywhere else in the world combined

[graceful junco]

Really? In that case, is somebody here fluent in chinese and available for translating? 😄

[silk lodge]

@graceful junco why do you want subtitles?

[graceful junco]

Well, why not? I will have audio in any case and just passing the text to a component for rendering is not really any work.

[silk lodge]

it's vr!

who wants to read subtitles in vr?

[graceful junco]

I guess someone who isn't fluent in english. -> "China has a lot morr people playing vr then anywhere else in the world combined" 😄

Also, I don't know yet how noisy my game will be in the end. Someone might just feel more comfortable, when they don't miss things that are being said. The only reason not to add subtitles would be "not enough time to implement it", which nobody can really say, cause it's almost no work.

[silk lodge]

I personally dislike subtitles - so I'm kinda biased

[wintry escarp]

anyone know if gearvr works yet on the nougat beta?

[mighty carbon]

@wintry escarp I saw something on Reddit about that, but I'd wait until S7 get official Android 7.1

there isn't anything in 7 for Gear VR that 6 doesn't have

Vulkan is only for non-VR games

[clever sky]

Subtitles are ok in VR.

What I haven't seen, and I'd like to see are speech bubbles! 😛

speech bubbles when you're looking at the speaker and subs when you're not.

[jagged vale]

streaming vanishing realms (VR) https://beam.pro/Vaei

[clever sky]

What is a technical artist?

[pearl tangle]

an artist that is also technical?

/ level designer

it wouldn't be too tough to make a speech bubble/ subtitle system actually

will put that on my todo list to try prototype that

[clever sky]

Lemme see how it goes if you do 😃

[pearl tangle]

@mighty carbon why do you think vulkan is only for non vr games?

@wintry escarp Gear VR is blocked on the 7 beta actually since Oculus isn't updated for it

[mighty carbon]

@pearl tangle Because Khronos hasn't finalized specs yet. I am talking about mobile VR here.

[pearl tangle]

also @graceful junco I would recommend going for chinese audio translation rather than getting a text translation if you have lots of speaking

yeah but you can still use it with VR

[winged shale]

@pearl tangle agree with that

[mighty carbon]

I asked Oculus devs, they are they one confirmed that Vulkan for mobile VR isn't ready and won't be ready any time soon

I go by what platform holder tells me

[pearl tangle]

works fine with cardboard and daydream

[mighty carbon]

@pearl tangle https://forums.oculus.com/developer/discussion/comment/456667/#Comment_456667

I am sure you know that on mobile UE4 falls back to ES3 / ES2 if Vulkan isn't supported

so even if you build/deploy with Vulkan renderer, and it works on mobile VR, doesn't really mean it runs Vulkan

[pearl tangle]

yep but the performance boost wouldn't be there. daydream and cardboard plugin are running things quite differently to the oculus sdk though. although im not really sure to the extent the daydream sdk modifies things really

[mighty carbon]

I am not really sure what "front buffer or multiple queue rendering" stands for and how essential that for VR, but if it's critical, and Vulkan doesn't support it, I don't see how Google platform can use Vulkan

[wintry escarp]

isn't the s7 the only thing that currently supports vulkan, and maybe the google pixel

they need a vr phone that can do 90hz

[leaden jackal]

WIP of the game options for our Paperboy inspired game Special Delivery:

http://i.imgur.com/EFgxkld.gif

[pearl tangle]

oculus is doing stuff a lot differently anyway so it might be critical to them but Cardboard is a lot simplier implementation of VR

[jagged vale]

@clever sky i guess you could summarize it as @pearl tangle said "an artist that is also technical" 😛 but level designer doesn't fit the bill, that's it's own thing, you could say rigging falls under it's category but it's sort of it's own thing as well, basically an artist that does a lot on the technical side whether it's pipeline, shaders, etc

lot of studios have their own definition of it

[clever sky]

Fair call.

Basically the artist with programming skills that knows how to make things look good through programming features 😛

I guess then, I wouldn't be a technical artist, despite knowing some programming and knowing some art 😛

[pearl tangle]

well in some places a technical artist could be the guy that writes custom scripts for max or maya even

[winged shale]

yeah "Technical Artist" in my mind refers to someone who somewhat deeply understands the pipeline, and has delved into art (and of course perhaps is also talented in it).. So this person could write shaders, but also go further and make them performant.

[jagged vale]

yeap, pretty much a strong 3d art background combined with a technical understanding and a way to contribute towards their area of choice

it's a pretty loose term though

[clever sky]

So it's a pretty valuable role!

[pearl tangle]

a blueprinter you could consider a technical artist

[clever sky]

Really?

[winged shale]

yeah the material editor is basically a lite shader coding program

[clever sky]

Yeah fair enough.

So I am a technical artist!

😛

[pearl tangle]

yeah if you are creating complex materials or other functionality and stuff in a lot of other node based programs you would consider it that.

[pearl tangle]

I just gave Epic a lot of extra money today

[mighty carbon]

Marketplace ?

[mighty carbon]

aye

my spreadsheet a bit less fancier 😃

got some things today too

[pearl tangle]

hah yeah i like my colour coded spreadsheet stuff. comes in handy

[mighty carbon]

👍

[clever sky]

I bought out the simple series too 😛

Can't pass up an asset pack full of stand ins that you don't have to create yourself 😛

Anyway... I have a glitching bug with my guns when I fire them (I think). Normally it moves smoothly with my hands.

[pearl tangle]

yeah figured it can come in handy for a bunch of random stuff. For $50 or whatnot for the whole set seems decent enough to prototype a bunch of things thats for sure

[clever sky]

But then it just judders all over the place for a few seconds after firing.

It's like 1 frame every second it just snaps

Maybe higher... 3 or 4

Anyone experienced that kinda thing?

[pearl tangle]

what attachment method have you gone with?

[clever sky]

Ummm... lemme check

Attach To component

Turns off simulate physics

same attachment that BP_Pickup_Cube uses

from the VRTemplate

[pearl tangle]

but its only causing an issue when you fire? Is it a physics projectile or just a line trace?

[clever sky]

Physics

[mighty carbon]

Btw, whoever had issues with MP and motion controllers, please get in touch with Alexander from Epic (with link to bug report on AnswerHub)

Epic also might have a training stream (I asked, but didn't heard "yes"m so I am speculating 😃 ) about networking VR properly

[pearl tangle]

i do recall seeing something about VR multiplayer twitch stream or something a while back

try firing your projectile a bunch of times in close succession and see if it makes the problem worse. I have found the physics projectile stuff can be causing some problems sometimes if it generates too close to the object

[mighty carbon]

I am puzzled as why Quake has better multiplayer than UE4 :/

(Darkplaces fork of Quake; performance wise)

[clever sky]

Fuck. UE still has that motion controller hand mismatch bug

[mighty carbon]

well, why not to file on AnswerHub and pass to to UnrealAlexander ?

[clever sky]

Yeah, I guess, at some point I will!

[pearl tangle]

hand mismatch?

[clever sky]

Steam controllers show left and right hand icons

[pearl tangle]

im waiting for Epic to hurry up and sort my UDN evaluation so I can get in and start asking a bunch of questions and have proper support

[clever sky]

UE doesn't give a shit.

UDN?

Proper dev?

[pearl tangle]

the Unreal Developer Network

the thing they had around for support back when they cost $1mill+ per license

so its properly monitored with assigned tickets and things for the questions

[clever sky]

Dayuummm...

That's right... UE4 wasn't so open at one point 😛

Thanks Unity!

[pearl tangle]

well UDK was similar to the UE4 license so was around for quite a while

but before that came along unreal was definitely priced quite differently so AAA studios are still using that other licensing method rather than the 5% model

but you can only get access to UDN above a certain level

[clever sky]

Once you hit a certain amount of revenue?

I guess they'd only want to provide direct support if they can justify the cost of doing so 😛

[pearl tangle]

well the regular forum and answerhub is for indies, not for studios

so you have to pay for the proper support side of things which is understandable

[clever sky]

Can't really complain!

It's a powerful tool, and I'm glad as hell I don't have to pay to learn/use it

Unlike lesser tools like... Maya 😛

[pearl tangle]

yeah well the forum, answerhub and discord can get most indie devs through majority of their stuff. the proper support is necessary for guys like me who are doing weird random stuff that a game engine wasn't really built for that we want that support channel to find out if Epic is already building capabilities for it rather than us trying to roll our own versions

[clever sky]

Aren't those answers in the roadmap?

Ok, figured out the cause of the judder.

It's the destroy actor command after firing...

Or lack thereof! Spawning too many bullets is what it is

They've got a lifespan of 3 seconds...

What's a good way to limit the number of live actors?

[pearl tangle]

the roadmap isn't really a good indication of if they are going to have a feature ready at a specific timeframe but at least if I can tell them what project I have and feature I need and specific date then they might be able to push things forward a bit to meet my deadlines, or at least tell me that its de-prioritized or something

yeah figured it was likely the physics element on there causing it, thats why i suggested to fire a shitload of them and see if it gets worse

[clever sky]

Fair enough. That's handy 😛

[pearl tangle]

does the projectile actually need physics on it for a particular reason?>

[abstract gale]

anything anyone grabbed in marketplace on sale for VR?

[mighty carbon]

I recall in Quake grenades from grenade launcher were the worst projectiles for networking. I am guessing it's just networking physics isn't an easy task?

I grabbed as few things, @abstract gale

[pearl tangle]

i grabbed a lot. don't think anything is specific to vr though

[abstract gale]

any recommended good buys? before this sale taps out!?

worked late, have 10 or so mins it seems? 😃

[clever sky]

Hmmm... the only thing I've found that helps the issue is to destroy the projectile as soon as it impacts

And that only helps by virtue of disgusing the judder as firing recoil

But then the sound and explosion I've attached to the particle on impact doesn't appear D:

Is there a better way of spawning sound and explosion to projectile impacts?

[pearl tangle]

you need to hide the mesh as soon as it hits and then wait for the explosion and whatnot to finish befor eyou destroy it. either that or you spawn the particle and sound in the world rather than attached to the particle

@abstract gale depends what you are looking to do. I don't think there is anything specific to VR that is on sale as far as plugins and blueprint stuff goes

[clever sky]

how do you do that? You do it outside of the projectile BP?

Spawning the sound/exploision in the world

[abstract gale]

thanks @pearl tangle btw good advice