virtual-reality

[pearl tangle]

I got 30 new things on there hah

[abstract gale]

you can, or put a delay @edgy rapids

@clever sky

[pearl tangle]

well instead of adding a component you just spawn it in the world.

but yeah simplest method is you do a hide on the particle mesh itself. spawn the sound and particles, put a delay the amount of time that the sound and particles play for and a destroy actor after the delay

[clever sky]

That's my default behaviour...

And it seems that the destroy actor node is causing the judder

because the judder will simply delay by whatever amount I put in before the destroy actor

[pearl tangle]

how about if you dont have the audio and particles going off?

[abstract gale]

@clever sky i spawn tons of projectiles..with sound and fx..and in some demos leave them around.. have no judder

doesnt seem right that that is the issue..

with low end spec card for testing

[clever sky]

@pearl tangle Turned off explosion and sound, still happening D:

Really seems at this point to be destroy actor itself causing it

[pearl tangle]

regular projectile component you are creating as your bullet?

[clever sky]

Ok.

Can confirm that it is destroy actor causing it. Either the automatic lifespan destruction or the manual call

@pearl tangle Yes, first person projectile

[abstract gale]

doesnt make sense..

[clever sky]

I know. It's weird as hell.

But I turned off the manual destroy actor

And set lifespan to 15 seconds

Fired 30-40 rounds

and 15 seconds later... it starts juddering 😛

[abstract gale]

what i did for a few cases was replace the impact actor with another with nothing more than the same mesh with a delay to destroy

ive had 30+ actors laying around after fire..and got no juddering on a weak card

[clever sky]

Yeah, it doesn't seem like the number of actors is the cause here.

The destroy actor call itself is causing the juddering.

To be clear I'm talking about judder in the motion controls

[abstract gale]

i even have special logic, and lots in some cases, to pick them up and refire..

[clever sky]

And not in the visuals.

Or HMD movement

[abstract gale]

yea, have had no impact.

[pearl tangle]

try spawning the projectiles from somewhere else in the level with nothing to do with your attached mesh

[abstract gale]

what card are you using?

[pearl tangle]

just setup a spawner somewhere and spawn them from the trigger

[abstract gale]

yea, was gonna say the same

is it really the projectiles?

[pearl tangle]

well its probably more likely that the projectiles are still in some way linked to the attached gun somehow and its doing something odd there

[abstract gale]

could be..

[clever sky]

The spawner definetly causes judder

[abstract gale]

hmm

[clever sky]

I mean, it's spawning once per tick

But yeah, the HMD is fine (ish) but the motion controllers are juddering.

[abstract gale]

well, per tick could be dangerous

[pearl tangle]

so not linked with your gun anymore, just something in the level and it still does it but only when its destroying it?

[abstract gale]

do like many a second, not a tick

[clever sky]

What's easy code to limit rate of fire?

[pearl tangle]

delay

[abstract gale]

a delay on your trigger

[pearl tangle]

just set a bool "canFire" or something after you pull the trigger and on delay toggle it

[abstract gale]

yea you need a multi fire mode or delay mode if trigger held down..

[clever sky]

Oh yeah

Delay worked fine

And the judder is even better

More defined somehow than per tick!

Probably because it's not continuously causing lag

[abstract gale]

well, tick is/can be a lot..

[clever sky]

Specifically, I'm saying its much easier to notice the judder when I set delay (to 200ms), because it's not ticking/juddering continuously.

It looks like... it almost forgets to do late update when it calls destroy actor

[abstract gale]

again, no idea why...there has to be another factor..

i destroy shit like a projectile all the time, even rapdily, and dont experience this with a shitty card even

[clever sky]

@winged shale I know you've had problems with late update! What are your thoughts! 😛

Yeah. Weird as hell

Well, I'm just going to work around it if I can

by spawning the explosion and sound off actor

But how?

[abstract gale]

try the profiler?

[clever sky]

Because the standard nodes just spawn stuff like particle and sound as a component

Oh... put them in their own actors

and spawn them as actors D:

[abstract gale]

process of elimination

boom

[pearl tangle]

destroying the component shouldnt be anything on the gpu anyway since it should be freeing up space on the gpu. unless you have a tonne of glass or something in your scene and bad materials that its trying to re render a bunch of stuff

[clever sky]

Yeah, I don't think it's a GPU thing so much as it is late update latching problem

Because everything else renders fine

Just the motion of the hand jerks

Ok. So it seems to be specifically

An issue with epics motion controller

Because VRExpansionPlugin's gripmotioncontroller component...

is fine!

[pearl tangle]

with your same firing thing?

i have had judder issues with the motion controllers too but usually came about when there was other issues

i think i may have gone overboard with the marketplace

[clever sky]

Yeah... I figured, well, if I want those things, they're good deals. But chances are, I don't actually want/need a lot of it

[pearl tangle]

they come in handy for us to prototype and put in a bunch of things

have done a bunch where we have ended up just pulling apart a specific asset from it and using with other things

ended up using the navigation system from the Fish 1 to create realistic flying birds which worked much better than the actual bird packs we have

and a lot of it is just for learning things too

if $5 saves us an hours time or 2 then its well worth it. I think I have put about $1500 into the marketplace now

[storm vortex]

@pearl tangle looks like my library now after the sale. I bought quite a few of the bigger scenes. They take a long time to load for me and don't perform too well unless async reproject is enabed. Are you seeing similar performence in any of the large scenes? (I wasn't expecting them to run smoothly to begin with). My SSD was also almost full when downloading so I think all my assets installed might have gotten fragmented on the disk.

[pearl tangle]

what large scenes are you talking about? I haven't actually tested any of the stuff yet. still downloading all the things

[storm vortex]

The Lake Side Cabin, Modular Building Set (City), Urban City, Modular Scifi Props (I think because of heavy reflection fx), Miliary Base, and especially the Cave one. (Underground Cave and Bunker) I cannot even get that one to run.

The best one I have tested so far perf wise is the Urban Construction pack. I don't think any of those scenes are likely optimized for VR, but I was curious how well they would perform.

[pearl tangle]

what gpu are you running?

[storm vortex]

1080SC with 4790k @pearl tangle

[pearl tangle]

tried lowering the display settings in editor with them? I assume their demo scenes probably aren't very good with the stuff but im sure plenty of the assets should be fine to use

[storm vortex]

They run perfectly fine in the editor, just when trying to view in VR. As I said though I didn't expect any of them to work that well but was just curious if you had any better luck. They do run alright with async reprojection enabled. I rather use that feature as a safetey net though

[pearl tangle]

well yeah they should run fine on a screen. Tried with the new renderer in 4.14 at all to see if there is any difference?

[storm vortex]

I haven't yet, takes a while for me to load each scene. I just wanted to check them all out first. When you check that box (forward render enable) it takes a long time for scenes to convert the shaders to it.

[pearl tangle]

yeah its not the fastest thing ever

but im sure if you dropped the display settings down and put shadows lower and scaling lower then you would be fine with them

[storm vortex]

If you change those settings in the editor will it also effect the headset as well? I have't tried playing with them yet. Up until today I have mostly been doing stuff with blueprints and didn't have any intense assets to work with.

[pearl tangle]

yep it does if you are doing the play in vr in the editor

[storm vortex]

that's good to know thanks for the tip

[clever sky]

Cool thing about having a bunch of assets from the marketplace is you get to go to a bunch of places in VR that most people have never tried 😛

[pearl tangle]

well if your machine can run it evidently :p

anybody done much testing with the vr works VR SLI?

i picked up 1 of the new sli bridges yesterday to start testing out

[empty sundial]

I don't think anyone's done much testing with it, too small of a use case

[clever sky]

Basically only useful as a specialist in-situ application

Like Trials on Tatoonie

[empty sundial]

Arch Vis work

WOuld probably benefit, if you are touring clients in VR

[clever sky]

Yeah. Anything where you can control the machine that the app will be used on.

[pearl tangle]

yeah pretty much 90% of my work seems like it should benefit from it since I have 3 1080's lying around

[clever sky]

Should be pretty nice.

Don't have to work as hard to optimize 😛

Or can have a high screen res setting without batting an eye.

[jagged vale]

i really need the day i can comfortably and accurately model in VR to come

much potential!

[clever sky]

3D model?

Shit yeah.

Tried Kodon

[jagged vale]

yessir

[clever sky]

It's so meh

[jagged vale]

i need to be able to do it on a professional level

[clever sky]

There's a poly limit of 25k polys

[jagged vale]

any current solutions are just "NOPE!"

[clever sky]

And you hit it within 4 seconds of waving your hands around

[jagged vale]

but it takes time for all this stuff to develop

[clever sky]

I know right?

[silk lodge]

@pearl tangle I haven't tried much with the hb sli bridge

[clever sky]

I kinda want to work at one of these 3D package companies just so that I don't have to put up with the dumb UX decisions that they make.

[silk lodge]

@pearl tangle I'd love to know if you get any cool boosts and how. So far most of my stuff is pretty simple, so it's probably why I'm not seeing much boosts from pascal vr sli

[pearl tangle]

getting some boosts at least?

[silk lodge]

no 😄

[clever sky]

@silk lodge Have you tried set res of 300?

[silk lodge]

yeah!

[clever sky]

No diff with SLI or no?

[silk lodge]

I was doing tests of msaa vs txaa vs fxaa over sli vs single

I had instanced stereo rendering on

I'm wondering if that defeats vr sli

I built a rig for vr sli, but then I got busy and haven't had much time to test it

[clever sky]

Hmmm

That'd suck if true D:

[silk lodge]

I have had fantastic results with flex and flow and dual gpus

the scene I was testing had about 10 objects in it

so I'm guessing vr sli helps more with more objects

[clever sky]

But I wants more resolutions D:

[silk lodge]

titan xp lets me run most stuff really high res

[clever sky]

Just spawn a shower of physics cubes

[silk lodge]

high res + txaa looks really good in certain situations

[pearl tangle]

you are definitely running the vrworks build for your stuff right?

[silk lodge]

yeah

otherwise I wouldn't have smp

[pearl tangle]

smp?

[silk lodge]

simultanious multi projection

[pearl tangle]

the new titan x's over here cost $1800 USD so really not worth it. waiting for the 1080 ti before i upgrade my home machine

[clever sky]

Titax X is the 10 series titan right?

[silk lodge]

yeah titan x pascal

[clever sky]

Hasn't it been called Titan X before? 😛

[silk lodge]

yes

stupid new name

[clever sky]

Goddamn confusing as hell.

[silk lodge]

so they're titan xps

got 2 of 'em the day cuz I didn't want to wait for 1080tis

and the 1080s were all sold out

[clever sky]

Threw down the cash monies!

[silk lodge]

aww yeah

[clever sky]

Useful so far?

[silk lodge]

I have a 1080 in for compute / physx / flow

[clever sky]

Ah

[silk lodge]

it's been nice for gpu accelleration in non vive stuff

and it's been good in vr games in general

but probably isn't making much difference

for most things

4.0 super sampling 😃

[clever sky]

Well, you'd want to take advantage of them.

But at the same time, you're sucking down power

I mean electricity for the luxury of it 😛

You running them on a 4k?

[silk lodge]

3x 1080p

been looking at 4k displays. Input lag is bad

[clever sky]

Fair enough. I had that setup. Kinda miss it.

[silk lodge]

I had 3x crts

but there's no analog ports on the 10 series

[clever sky]

Damn. You must've been running with CRTs for a decade+

[silk lodge]

almost 3

the color is nice

the viewing angle is nice

3D is alright

[clever sky]

Slight radioactive emission is nice 😄

[silk lodge]

I'm gonna get super powers!

I'm recompiling shaders for my project, and I will find out if turning off instanced stereo makes vrsli work faster

6.6ms with sps on

[clever sky]

SPS?

[silk lodge]

wait 6.6 with instanced stereo on

single pass stereo is another trick

[clever sky]

Ah

[native cedar]

@silk lodge did you manage to get flex fluid simulation working with multires?

[silk lodge]

@native cedar I haven't used multires - does it mess up the smoothing pixel values?

[native cedar]

Sadly I have weird behaviors when using them together (funhouse source installation)

I'm struggling 'cause I need them fluid particles but also performance

[silk lodge]

do you have 2 gpus?

'cuz it's great with 2 gpus

[native cedar]

nope, but eventually I can

do you suggest SLI or physx dedicated?

[silk lodge]

it really takes a lot of power to compute

well, you need 1 compute (flex / flow / physx) and 1 graphics

I want to believe vr sli works

on the flip side, if it does not, I'll have 4 vr capable machines

'cuz I'll break up my titans 😃

[native cedar]

so what is the best rendering settings you have found so far? 220 screen percentage + txaa?

[clever sky]

@silk lodge Isn't the recommended machine for max settings on funhouse... 2 1080 SLI? or is it 3?

1 is def for physx

If it's 2... means they couldn't even get SLI working for their own thing

[silk lodge]

they said 3 actually

2 in sli, one for compute

[clever sky]

Ah there you go

Well at least someone got it working!

[silk lodge]

https://twitter.com/puzzabug/status/789700675340935170

here's the real deal

funhouse does not take advantage of unreal's hdr rendering

and does not have much fire

https://twitter.com/puzzabug/status/781014761261690880

you can get really rad fire

[clever sky]

Dayum. That's pretty.

[silk lodge]

https://twitter.com/puzzabug/status/776187153822855168

[clever sky]

What's it look like in VR?

[silk lodge]

it looks great

[clever sky]

volumetric?

[silk lodge]

yeah

realtime volumetric fire rendering

[clever sky]

Far out.

[silk lodge]

you can tweak the shader in realtime as well

[clever sky]

Now do real time volumetric interactive clouds

😄

[silk lodge]

I've done clouds of smoke 😛

[clever sky]

Interactive?

[silk lodge]

yeah

you could probably do clouds, but the problem is that it's not shaded well

so it's best for emissives

[clever sky]

Niceee... I spent an hour playing with my giant soccer ball

in VR.

[silk lodge]

lol

[clever sky]

I think I'd just lose a day to smoke.

and clouds.

[silk lodge]

I made beach ball valley 'cuz hitting beach balls is fun!

You could loose weeks

it's really fun

[pearl tangle]

they have the other system that can work well for clouds but not sure how it would like interactive 1s

[silk lodge]

people who demo it get lost in there

[clever sky]

Hahah 😄

You mean SimulSky?

[pearl tangle]

so are you running the 3 cards in there? 2 in sli and dedicated physx

nah i mean part of the nvidia stuff

[clever sky]

Ah

[pearl tangle]

i don't think its included in vr works

[clever sky]

Part of their game works stuff

maybe

[pearl tangle]

oh they do have it in there

nvidia flow

turbulence is in there too

wait no its not. thats just in the fun house 1 sorry

[native cedar]

lol crazy

[silk lodge]

also, just to make sure I'm getting top results, I've got a board running those 16x 16x 8x

[pearl tangle]

ah that might actually be why you don't get the full performance boost from SLI too if you are running them like that and for physx. Have you tried just 1 monitor from the SLI 1 and dedicated physx from the other titan?

[silk lodge]

I could try disabling monitors right now

[pearl tangle]

i have seen multiple monitors do some odd stuff with the vive before so you never know

[silk lodge]

yeah, if you're rendering your primary display and vive on different cards, you're gonna have a bad time

[pearl tangle]

also if the 1080 is running like that doesn't it bring down the max memory available on the titan x's to the 8gb or have they solved that problem?

[silk lodge]

it's not in sli

it's just for compute

[pearl tangle]

well you cant run different cards in SLI anyway but i know previously there was issues with things but i feel like maybe im remembering it a bit out of whack since it was like 7-8 years ago that i was screwing with that stuff

[silk lodge]

perhaps

so I've got some results with sli

gonna disable sli and brb

[pearl tangle]

maybe it was back doing cuda stuff

[silk lodge]

that might be it

but I'm not sure

[native cedar]

I'm getting 4ms with a 1080, stationary directional light, no skylight and a map with just a skysphere and some spheres painted as foliage. 220 sp + r.postprocessquality 3 (faster txaa) and forward renderer

did anyone get a better result?

[silk lodge]

6.60 instanced stereo / single pass stereo / multires rendering / lense matched rendering

6.98 single pass stereo / multires rendering / lense matched rendering
6.21

6.6 multires rendering / lense matched rendering
6.03

6.38 (removed extra monitors)

no sli

6.3
5.5

so with sli off

my scene is working better

=/

[pearl tangle]

wonder at what point that changes. I know instanced stereo gives a performance hit up until a certain point

[native cedar]

I never noticed any substantial change with instanced stereo...

epic's VR showdown doesn't even use it

[silk lodge]

I think it reduces draw calls

so in some scenes it could be great

but not if they're only using a few objects

[pearl tangle]

they didn't have instanced stereo in there when they did showdown. that was made back on dk2

[silk lodge]

@pearl tangle do you have dual gpus?

[hard light]

Instances stereo isn't a magic bullet and can sometimes make performance worse

You need to do your own benchmarking and find what works for you

[pearl tangle]

i haven't got them sitting in this computer at the moment but i have some 1080's i will rig up in sli when i get a bit of time

[silk lodge]

alright. I should package some of my funny flex demos and send 'em to you.

lmk when you've got 'em set

every time I change a vr rendering setting it has to recompile 5000 shaders

[pearl tangle]

yeah shoot through a download link and il get them setup for tomorrow

send me a PM or something and I will give them a shot. always fun to try out random PC breaking stuff hah

[wicked oak]

yeah, benchmarking VR its annoying as fuck

becouse every setting changes everything

with nvidia branch, you have a fuck ton of settings

VRMultires-InstStereo-Forward

those 3 are enabled/disabled independently, and they all cause recompile

[hard light]

Crossfire does nothing to my knowledge

[wicked oak]

it can do stuff, its not implemented in many games

UE4 cant use it, for example

but it can use SLI for VR IF you use nvidia vrworks branch

[hard light]

I mean Crossfire does nothing for any VR implementation, to my knowledge nobody has implemented Crossfire support

[cobalt relic]

SLI & Crossfire are dead tech anyway

[hard light]

people use SLI

Crossfire, not so much

[cobalt relic]

Some people use SLI, yeah

It's still useless most of the time

[clever sky]

Is there a new version of SLI coming?

Or is it dead simply because devs can't be assed supporting it? 😛

[cobalt relic]

SLI support is close to impossible in modern pipelines, outside of VR

[clever sky]

Doesn't play well with deferred?

[hard light]

it's pretty dead for games as so few consumers have multiple cards that it isn't worth supporting anyway

for GPU computing on the other hand, it has it's uses

[clever sky]

Yeah fair enough.

[hard light]

still, SLI might see some resurgence with VR

[clever sky]

AI training system basically

[hard light]

stereo instanced rendering with SLI seems like a neat trick to have for VR to me

[cobalt relic]

SLI has two giant issues :

• you can find a single GPU that performs better than your SLI at an equivalent price, with better support, until a very high price range
• it's very hard to implement, say, motion blur or temporal AA on SLI with AFR

[hard light]

could potentially really help framerates

[cobalt relic]

It can be super nice for VR, sure, but still not betetr than a single GPU

It does help for research, heavy computation, etc

[clever sky]

The dream is dead!

[cobalt relic]

imho there never was a dream. SLI was launched around the Crysis period, when GPUs just couldn't keep up

After 2010 that wasn't an issue anymore

[hard light]

I don't think a single GPU is going to be strictly better than SLI for VR

[clever sky]

Well, it was always a dream, never a reality. The dream was SLI delivering solid 50%+ performance

the reality is it delivering spotty performance with compatibility issues everywhere

[hard light]

you can essentially do a considerable amount of the work for each eye on either GPU

[clever sky]

And now it's not even a hope anymore 😛

[cobalt relic]

@hard light Probably not, but if you factor in the game engine support ?

I mean, what use is SLI if it's only as good as one GPU ?

It needs to be much better for the price

[hard light]

the Nvidia UE4 branch will support it, if it doesn't already

[clever sky]

It kinda does. Cept Puzzabug couldn't get it working

when he tried just now 😛

[hard light]

yeah, it's a new feature / work in progress - I wasn't sure how well that was working yet

[cobalt relic]

The point is, no one wants to buy hardware that performs 10% better on some games, 50% worse on others.

[hard light]

the gains should be somewhere in the region of 40-60% when implemented properly though

so we'll see what Nvidia pulls out of their arse for this one

[cobalt relic]

So you're saying, a $500 SLI will perform 60% better than a $500 single GPU ?

[hard light]

no, compared to the same single GPU

but that's the point - no single GPU is up to snuff when it comes to doing VR well

if you want 90+ fps with modern visuals, you're gonna need better hardware

which is why people are also interested in foveated rendering of course

[cobalt relic]

So a GTX 1080 isn't enough ?

[hard light]

SLI isn't about price / performance, it's just about performance

a GTX1080 is enough to run projects intended to run on a GTX1080

[clever sky]

Yeah, basically SLI is a way to throw money at the problem 😛

[hard light]

and they look crap compared to a flat experience

[cobalt relic]

You can't seriously tell me that there isn't a single GPU that works well in VR.

If you need a $2000 rig to run VR, VR is dead too

[clever sky]

Haha... it depends on the dev. But a lot of VR devs are happy to target the baseline spec for better customer base

[hard light]

VR is enthusiast grade expensive shit

[clever sky]

and because it's just easier to build lo-fi

[hard light]

even the baseline is a £900 PC + £760 VR kit, heh

lo-fi is also cheaper to build too, of course

[clever sky]

At this point in time, you'd only need SLI if you were a dev putting out a VR app where you can control the machine.

[cobalt relic]

My point is, SLI is useless unless you're building a computer with a budget > $2k

[clever sky]

That the app is experienced on.

[cobalt relic]

And that's a market so tiny and small, no one cares

So the tech is dead

[hard light]

VR is niche, very niche, and it's going to stay that way for a long time

[clever sky]

Yeah, I'd have to agree SLI is pretty dead. Too hard to make work.

And not enough users to justify making it work for.

[hard light]

until hardware catches up and things become affordable, it'll stay niche

[cobalt relic]

If VR needs a $800 headset on a $2000 rig, it's going to be dead soon too

[clever sky]

Nah. It'll be fine. Just a slower burn before a nice ramp up

[cobalt relic]

I mean, I'm a game dev, I'm a longtime gamer, I would never put more than $1k on a PC.

[clever sky]

I don't know why you guys are so happy to call everything dead 😛

[hard light]

'VR is dead!'

VR has barely even started yet.

it has a small audience of enthusiasts

[cobalt relic]

I'm not saying its dead, I'm saying it doesn't have a future at that kind of price

[clever sky]

Especially love the guys that are all; VR is dead! AR is the next big thing!

[hard light]

it's not going to stay that expensive, but hardware is not cheap enough to go massively mainstream

[clever sky]

Well, you can certainly get away with spending less than $2800 right now.

[hard light]

it'll take a few years

heck, PC gaming used to cost that much once upon a time, and look where we are now?

[clever sky]

But I think it's fair to say that the average VR player right now probably has spent that region.

[cobalt relic]

Basically I'm super happy with VR because it makes GPU makers go nuts

Which I fully support

[clever sky]

Modern gamers cry so much about cost D:

[cobalt relic]

VR has been a great tech train

It will continue being that and it's great

[hard light]

I remember when the first IBM Thinkpads came out and cost something like £7500 xD

[clever sky]

If you can still remember old school gaming prices, you'll know it's a great time to be alive now! 😛

[hard light]

(adjusted for inflation, that's going to be around £12,000)

these days everyone has a laptop

VR today is where cinema was in 1920 - I think this is a fair comparison

[cobalt relic]

So I guess you think PSVR is shit ? Because it's much closer to mass market pricing.

[hard light]

PSVR is still very expensive when you add it all up

[clever sky]

PSVR is great marketing.

[hard light]

and it's okay, but it's very low res and visually the PS4 can't do much with it

[clever sky]

It's only $400!

[hard light]

it's not $400 when you add it all up

[cobalt relic]

PSVR is basically $900, so basically the Vive headset

[clever sky]

@hard light Exactly!

[hard light]

PS4 Pro (£340) + PSVR (£350) + Camera (£35) + Controllers (£100) = nearly £1000

[cobalt relic]

825

You fail at math, @hard light .

[hard light]

yeah, £825

that's pretty expensive for what it does

[cobalt relic]

Which is kinda rich coming from me

[hard light]

but for the first mass-market VR kit, it's not too bad at what it does

[clever sky]

Honestly. I think it's actually a good thing that VR prices were higher than expected.

And that's counterintuitive as hell.

[hard light]

if they'd have cheaped out any more the experience would just not have been good enough

[clever sky]

But here's what it is; the higher prices set a higher anchor point for VR to work its way down from.

Gives VR more headroom to keep pushing the envelope

because the tech isn't really quite there yet to be - I NEED THIS - for everyone.

[hard light]

IMHO, they shouldn't have supported the basic PS4, since PSVR on the basic model isn't stellar - it's DK1 levels of janky

[cobalt relic]

I'm not sure if VR headsets will be that much cheaper in the long term.

"long" being 10 years

[hard light]

I think they're going to get better before they get cheaper

[clever sky]

@cobalt relic Well, we'll have more tiers, mainly from previous generation of tech and equivalent. Not unlike how iPhones created natural tiers through gen progression

[hard light]

that's a fair comparison

[clever sky]

So, it'll be a trickle down model of affordability.

[hard light]

new mobile handsets are still £700-800 when they come out

[cobalt relic]

Sure, but I reject the idea that Rifts will cost $200 in 10 years, for example.

[hard light]

they're just better

I'm pretty sure the CV1 equivalent will cost that much or less in a decade

[clever sky]

Nah. The high anchor point allows them to anchor expectations of that going forwards.

[hard light]

a lot changes in 10 years

[clever sky]

I mean it can always shift up or down. But when it shifts up, consumers bitch and moan

See gaming consoles

Which needed to go up as simple inflation adjustment economics.

But gamers still loved to cry about the price rises 😛

[hard light]

plasma TVs cost $1800 in 2006, now you can get superior ones for $500

not that people still buy plasma TVs, but you get the point

[clever sky]

Luckily for MS, the PS3 just threw out the price anchor point and took a hell of a beating for it.

So the $400 is launched at was comparatively ok!

[cobalt relic]

Thing is, unlike plasma TVs, VR don't live in a vacuum

They need games

You can upgrade your TV to plasma, you don't need better content

[hard light]

HDTVs needed HD content

[cobalt relic]

Or different content

Sure

But you were saying plasma

[hard light]

plasma was the example, as it was a new technology

[clever sky]

The content will come. I just don't expect big new AAA VR titles for another 3-5 years.

Not least because AAA content just takes a long time to make.

[cobalt relic]

What I'm saying is, VR needs to have a market from the outset, so that developers make games on it.

[hard light]

niche markets are still markets

[cobalt relic]

If there is no VR market there will be no VR market

[clever sky]

But we'll get stuff like Fallout 4 and Doom to test the waters.

And it'll be great!

And so so much indy content.

[hard light]

Farm Simulator 17 absolutely crushed it this year, but it's a niche market game targeted at a small enthusiast audience

I'm really not convinced by Fallout 4 / Doom VR

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[cobalt relic]

Remember that the Wii U didn't have games n it, and it sold considerably more than the VR headsets are doing

Hopefully VR will sell more

[hard light]

tbh, I think VR is going to outsell the WiiU given a similar timeframe

the WiiU was a disaster

[clever sky]

It'll take time. It's a new medium... Can't expect it to have out the gate performance of established tech during their generation upgrades.

But if you take VR as a whole, excluding cardboard... it's probably already doing better than Wii U

[cobalt relic]

The Wii U sold 6M units in the first year, and it was hailed a disaster

[clever sky]

If you limit it to just Rift and Vive, it'll take longer 😛

[hard light]

it was a disaster because the investment proportional to expectations proportional to sales were bad

[clever sky]

That's because it has a huge established user base to draw from and resultant expectations to meet.

[hard light]

it sold something like 15 million units over it's life when it was expected to do 100 million

[cobalt relic]

How much VR headsets will be sold in the first year after Rift & Vive get out ?

[hard light]

PC VR is sat at around half a million units

[clever sky]

My guess is under a million combined from Rift and Vive.

[hard light]

PSVR may outsell that already

[clever sky]

Maybe. Depends on how many Sony decided to ship. Still hard to find I think.

[hard light]

Sony are struggling to meet demand, so it's hard to say what it will eventually ship

I think they underestimated demand

[clever sky]

Have you been using VR much @cobalt relic ?

[hard light]

motion controllers are becoming hard to find in most territories

[clever sky]

Yeah, I wanted a PSVR at launch. But I couldn't find a bundle for all th parts here in Australia

So, oh well, I'll just wait 😛

[cobalt relic]

@clever sky Nope, I don't really care about VR. I enjoy it as a driver for better gaming tech, but I hate having something to wear on my head.

[clever sky]

@cobalt relic Fair enough. Well to each their own. But I think the most telling thing for people that have used VR for a bit...

[cobalt relic]

It's a great concept, just not my cup of tea 😃

[clever sky]

Is that everything is so much better in VR 😛

As long as its built for VR

[hard light]

I'm enjoying VR, but I'm an enthusiast for this kind of thing :p

I'm the target audeince, hehe

[clever sky]

Or highly compatible with it (like Project Cars/Elite Dangerous)

[cobalt relic]

I'm convinced it's a larger experience with infinitely better immersion than the screen

[clever sky]

And I say that in the sense that... Doom 3 is a crappy game

[cobalt relic]

Better immersion is not what I'm after though

[clever sky]

But in VR with the VR mod, it's magnificent! :p

[hard light]

Doom 3 is neat in VR, but the mod has a long, long way to go xD

[clever sky]

True! But the point is, it makes a mediocre game a better experience

Circling back around to my main point; it's difficult to go back to the normal experience when the VR experience is available.

[cobalt relic]

I think it's going to depend on the audience

[clever sky]

I mean, you can make the argument that it's not so convenient right now, and that the limitations means it's not as valuable to some people as others.

But in the future... where the tech is mature and evolved enough...

I'm hard pressed to see a future in which standard gaming survives outside of a niche dedicated to by then retro experienced 😛

[cobalt relic]

My own gaming setup is a PS4 + videoprojector, so I do a lot of moving around the room to do stuff while a level is loading, or to say hi to my gf in the bedroom. Not to mention cooking while gaming, a dangerous experience 😄

Not to mention we get to watch eachother play

It's a different way of playing

[clever sky]

Like... 15-20 years of tech maturation, where the HMD is light, the FOV is large, it can be tracked robustly, it can connect to your phone or console or PC, it's an AR/VR/MR device, etc, etc.

[hard light]

I'm mostly looking forwards to multiplayer VR games where one person is in VR, and one person is on the desktop

[clever sky]

Like panopticon?

And Diner Duo?

[hard light]

UE4 needs to hurry up and implement that shit, because Unity does it out of the box 😦

[cobalt relic]

Doesn't Keep talking and nobody explode do that ?

[hard light]

it's like some kind of funky asymmetrical split screen experience 😄

[cobalt relic]

it's very fun apparently

[hard light]

yeah, keep talking kind of does it

[clever sky]

What I'd like is combined AR/VR

where you and people physically close by

are gathered around a table

with multiplayer vr users

and you're playing some sort of interactive table top board game

[hard light]

I'm looking forwards to proper AR tabletop gaming, but that's a long way off yet 😦

[clever sky]

See how magic leap does.

[hard light]

need a decent tethered AR headset

[clever sky]

Maybe it could be sooner than expected

[hard light]

none of this all-in-one unit bollocks

[clever sky]

So you want mostly VR with a bit of AR? 😛

[hard light]

no, I just want the hardware to actually be capable of doing what it needs to do!

(and it would be cheaper since you don't need to try and cram top end mobile hardware into a headset)

[clever sky]

So you'd think right? 😛

Maybe... it isn't because you can't get as much of economy of scale

when you're expecting to sell peripherals

[hard light]

mice, keyboards, monitors, all peripherals :p

[clever sky]

Those are integrated components that were modular enough to be swapped out 😛

[cobalt relic]

I'm looking forward for giant borderless flat TVs, more processing power on consoles, and uh, a more resilient dualshock 4

That's it, I'm a conservative now

[clever sky]

@cobalt relic They're already pretty big and flat and small on borders

Basically you want same as the last 2 decades of gaming 😛

Come on! Raise your ambition a little!

[cobalt relic]

I want the same with much more pixels

And better games

😄

[clever sky]

We've pretty much plateaued on game quality.

[cobalt relic]

I'll disagree, I'm very much limited by processing power on my own game, and that's on PC

[clever sky]

Depends by what you mean by quality.

[hard light]

more processing power can theoretically allow you to do more, but nobody seems to really be leveraging it tbh

[clever sky]

I was thinking more quality of mechanics.

Quality of design.

[cobalt relic]

Mechanics typically don'r require processing power

But even on that front, I'l disagree

[hard light]

there are decade old games that still hold up pretty well today

take a look at Company of Heroes as an example

people still haven't made a better RTS :/

[clever sky]

Maybe not flattened out completely, but certainly we're roundly in the slow growth era of improvement to game mechanics on traditional games.

[cobalt relic]

I have been playing Destiny for two years now, and the overall game design is superb, especially the raid mechanics.

[clever sky]

The exception here is VR. Because it changes the basic paradigms of input/output

[cobalt relic]

The art could certainly use 4K and HDR

[clever sky]

It's derivative.

Destiny that is

[hard light]

I think the only thing we've seen that's been disruptive in games is the idea of the large scale survival genre

[clever sky]

Like Day-Z?

[hard light]

(and amusingly how they're all still in early access after years)

yeah

[clever sky]

What about MOBAs?

Shits all over the place now 😛

[hard light]

MOBAs have been around for a very long time

[clever sky]

I still don't understand who these people playing MOBAs are.

[hard light]

it's only recently they got a label

[clever sky]

Well... DOTA1 has been around for a long time.

[cobalt relic]

Cooperative gaming ala Borderlands, perfected by Destiny, is the biggest improvement in recent years I can think of

[hard light]

ironically, the more casual audience, hehe

[cobalt relic]

Blending of solo & multiplayer is really cool

[hard light]

that's not really a new thing either, tbh

Borderlands did it really well though

[clever sky]

It's basically MMOs with persistency boiled away

[cobalt relic]

Nobody cares about the MMO part

[clever sky]

Pretty much.

[cobalt relic]

The part people care about is joining their friends after seing they're doing a cool mission

[clever sky]

Like you can have the massive part... and it doesn't matter because you just spend a bunch of time with a few people running a dungeon!

[cobalt relic]

Or doing raids with peopkle trying to guess how it works

You never see more than 12 people in Destiny anyway

I'm just really happy about the small-scale cooperative multiplayer model

Borderlands did it well, destiny does even betetr imho

[clever sky]

You mean medium scale

[wicked oak]

Warframe does it too

[clever sky]

Because small scale is like... 2-4 players

Halo style

[cobalt relic]

@clever sky The typical format is 3 players vs AI

6 in raids

[clever sky]

@cobalt relic Oh. Ok. 😛

[cobalt relic]

Up to 6v6 in pvp

Borderlands was up to 4 I think

[hard light]

4 by default, 8 with a mod

[clever sky]

I wonder if we can get VR and gamepad players in a game concurrently.

In multiplayer.

[hard light]

obviously you can

[clever sky]

Maybe asymmetrical classes.

[cobalt relic]

It's a great scale, you play with people who actually care and talk to you

[hard light]

but it needs to be mechanically sound

[clever sky]

Because it'd be an awesome way to advertise VR

as long as you have good tracking of the VR player

they can be far more expressive

[cobalt relic]

Gamepad vs mouse works well if you're not doing a competitive shooter

Or something that doesn't work on gamepad like a RTS

[hard light]

gamepad vs mouse only works if it's not competitive

but PC games that work best on gamepads are fine

[clever sky]

Like third person games

[hard light]

e.g. Rocket League

not all third person games

Gears as an example would have been a disaster if they allowed competitive cross platform play

[cobalt relic]

Stuff like World Of games should be fine too

[clever sky]

Gear plays better with KB/M?

I guess it would.

[hard light]

considerably

I found it unplayable with a gamepad personally

[clever sky]

But it was designed for the gamepad! 😛

[hard light]

who takes 10 seconds to turn around 360 degrees on the spot? lol

it was immeasurably frustrating for me

like trudging through treacle all the time xD

[clever sky]

Oh yeah.

I was dual wielding in VR today in my own game.

Fucking hard as hell to hit both spots at the same time consistently.

How you do it game characters?

What hax you using??

[hard light]

play more Space Pirate Trainer

I can do it :p

[clever sky]

I think SPT has a little help 😛

Actually I don't know. I do know that your fnger position can easily throw off your aiming when shooting though

[hard light]

it depends what you're used to apparently

[clever sky]

And that some VR games do use a little auto-aim correction

[hard light]

I don't think SPT has any aim adjustment in it though

you'd see it when it does the trace based effects

[native cedar]

I am investigating how they achieved the funhouse rendering on ue4.11

I am discovering interesting stuff!

these are the console commands that get executed in the funhouse game

I wonder what does that r.HairWorks.MsaaLevel mean

[upbeat holly]

Getting the Vive in eta -5 mins

so excited

[native cedar]

@upbeat holly get ready to join nolifecity

[upbeat holly]

wut is it?

o lol

ALREADY THERE

[native cedar]

WELL THEN

[upbeat holly]

SINCE WERE SHOUTING ID LIKE TO SAY THANKS FOR YOUR WARM INVITATION

[native cedar]

YOU ARE VERY WELCOME INDEED

[hard light]

HAPPY VIVE DAY

https://giphy.com/gifs/southparkgifs-l0HlFGWh0oulcTw2s

[upbeat holly]

lol

*I do solemny swear

[spring pond]

May the lighthouse beacons shine down on you, like (laser) light from heaven

[upbeat holly]

I Bathe solely in the glory of vive....

[clever sky]

I wanna do a little force pull when I grab the handle of an object, instead of having it just pop into my hand.

What's the best way to move lerp an object into position?

I'm trying to teleport it... but it's buggy D:

[mighty carbon]

what happens if I hook up Vive/Rift to 670GTX ?

[neon egret]

Ehm, no idea how strong that one is, but what do you expect to happen?

[mighty carbon]

well, I am sure if I just have an empty room, performance should be fine

[winged shale]

.....what?

I swear to god I am certain you're trolling us sometimes

[mighty carbon]

I just don't want for Rift software to prevent me from messing with VR if I don't meet min recommended specs

I am not trolling.. It's a legit question. If an empty room can be rendered at 120 fps for 2D screen, theoretically in VR it should yield 60 fps.

Which is what Gear VR renders at with a way less powerful hardware and not in an empty room

I just want to get jump start in development before I get 1070.

[hard light]

120fps flat is not going to be 60fps VR

but anyway, the 670 isn't a great card for VR, but you may be able to do some simple stuff with it

[winged shale]

it's mostly the overhead of the rendering pipeline, theory breaks down when you have to set up all the features of the engine for a desktop renderer each frame.

670 will barely eke out enough to hit 90Hz. In the lab before we upgraded, we had a bunch of DK2 kits, and the 780s in them couldn't do it at 75Hz

so ultimately you're gonna have a bad experience on the 670

[mighty carbon]

eeh, I don't know what kind of scene complexity you had there, but I don't see why an empty room level wouldn't render at 75 fps in VR

on 670GTX

[winged shale]

ok go ahead then, have fun

[mighty carbon]

I certainly would try, if I knew for a fact Oculus software wouldn't block me from using Rift with 670GTX (which theoretically could happen; I can see a pop-up saying I am out of luck)

[native cedar]

if you yo forward with sp 120, the faster txaa and only baked lightning you can do stuff with a 670

you can go real low when it comes to rendering, also none of this matters if you just need to implement programmed stuff

[mighty carbon]

@native cedar that's the idea - to build a BP framework, while keeping visuals confined to a room (or several occluded rooms). Once I have get 1070, I can focus on visuals as gameplay would be partially implemented.

[native cedar]

in that case, no need to worry, if you use the proper settings it won't even look bad

[mighty carbon]

aye, thanks

[wintry escarp]

don't listen to the 780 haters, the 780 rulles

[native cedar]

lol 780 doesn't exist

[wintry escarp]

it does, I have one. I didn't imagine it

[native cedar]

did... did you take your pills today?

[cobalt relic]

wtf

[mighty carbon]

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-780

[cobalt relic]

I know I've had one at work for two years

So I'm confident it does exist

[clever sky]

The 8 series doesn't exist. Nvidia jumped from 7 to 9.

But, I'm pretty sure snowbro was just fuckin around 😛

[mighty carbon]

870 wouldn't exist, but 780 does 😃

[cobalt relic]

870M does exist

[mighty carbon]

that's mobile

[cobalt relic]

Yeah

Just saying the 8xx did exist, just only as mobile GPUs

[clever sky]

Well, the 8 series didn't exist in my world!

[mighty carbon]

btw, do Vive/Rift have force feedback in the HMD ?

[hard light]

errr, no?

do you know what force feedback is?

[mighty carbon]

aye, just asking

of course not /s

Just asking because in Gear VR, since the phone is in HMD, you get to have force feedback on your face

so theoretically (I haven't tried it yet) you can have something slamming in VR in your face and HMD would vibrate

(I wonder if it's safe for the phone - might fall out of Gear VR)

[hard light]

force feedback is not vibration

force feedback is used in things like joysticks and steering wheel accessories - it applies a physical force on the yoke / wheel counter to what you are doing in order to apply realistic feedback

[mighty carbon]

hmm.. yeah, it is.

[hard light]

no, it isn't

[mighty carbon]

small motors in gamepad create vibration

[hard light]

that's not force feedback

the clue is in the name

FORCE feedback

[mighty carbon]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haptic_technology

"Haptic or kinesthetic communication recreates the sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the user."

vibrations

[hard light]

yes, rumble devices are haptic feedback devices

HAPTIC

[mighty carbon]

are you being anal about wording ?

[hard light]

No.

Read the article:
"In lighter aircraft without servo systems, as the aircraft approached a stall the aerodynamic buffeting (vibrations) was felt in the pilot's controls. This was a useful warning of a dangerous flight condition. This control shake is not felt when servo control systems are used. To replace this missing sensory cue, the angle of attack is measured and when it approaches the critical stall point, a stick shaker is engaged which simulates the response of a simpler control system. Alternatively, the servo force may be measured and the signal directed to a servo system on the control, known as force feedback."

[mighty carbon]

google for "force feedback gamepad" and youget crap load of products that "vibrate"

[hard light]

highlighted the important bit in italics

[spring pond]

https://giphy.com/gifs/popcorn-movie-scarlett-johansson-PhvQ0pSu9MgLe

[mighty carbon]

I don't know what world you come from, but force feedback always implied vibration

[hard light]

https://giphy.com/gifs/9mWg0JLV4NwM8

[mighty carbon]

since like first gamepads with force feedback , when the word haptic wasn't even used widely

[hard light]

force feedback is not vibration, it's not even open for discussion - this isn't me being pedantic, they are literally two different things. Force feedback is when the user is given feedback by applying a physics force to their controller

[mighty carbon]

no, it's you being pedantic

gamepads advertised as "with force feedback"

have you even held one of those, especially back in the days ? It vibrates, that's what it does.

[hard light]

if they're advertised with force feedback, they are wrong

the whole point of FORCE feedback is that it uses FORCE - how is this not obvious?

i.e a joystick that literally pulls your hand

[mighty carbon]

http://www.simprojects.nl/images/current_buffers.gif

it's literally a motor, eccentric motor

https://www.precisionmicrodrives.com/vibration-motors/eccentric-rotating-mass-vibration-motors-erms

but, keep being anal about it... I don't care 🙄

[hard light]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=difference+between+force+feedback+and+vibration

read, learn, enjoy.

[cobalt relic]

Force feedback, not vibration, is a thing

It's just a super expensive thing that gamepads or HMDs can't have

Like @hard light said

[hard light]

technically you could do it with analogue sticks, but I don't know why you would

[cobalt relic]

Actual force feedback on a stick would be so awesome

Like really cool

[hard light]

used correctly it could be pretty good actually

[cobalt relic]

Think "trying to push crate but can't"

Some joysticks do it

[hard light]

yeah, I have a HOTAS that has force feedback

hardly any games use it any more though 😦

let it be known, that by falling down the rabbit hole I have discovered that it is theoretically possible to do a kind of force feedback with motion controllers through the use of gyroscopes

[cobalt relic]

Yeah

It's basically how bullets are stabilized in rifled barrels

[hard light]

in theory you could do it in the HMD too, but it'd be heavy and vibrating all the time

it'd be like having a pair of lighthouses attached to your face in addition to the HMD D:

[cobalt relic]

Much immersion

Such feedback

wow

[clever sky]

Wow! My neck really felt that twisting and wrenching! VR is so realistic!

[hard light]

lol

[clever sky]

Can you imagine trying to dev for a full immersion exo-gyro-suit-thing from ready player one?

You'd have so many bruises from fucking up your vector maths and shit 😛

Apply force here... no, not that force oh god

In the end, you're like, F-you players, you can bear the same pain I did!

[hard light]

you could probably kill someone with a simple math bug

one inverted vector and it's all over...

[clever sky]

sploosh

"what was that sound? omg why is there blood all over the walls??!"

[wicked oak]

ive only seen force feedback on racing wheels and flight sticks

never EVER on a gamepad

basically they do force against your movement

so if you are in a racing game and turn fast, the wheel can do force against you, or depending on bumps on the road

its NOT "vibration"

[heady parrot]

I agree with you here. I really want to see actual force feedback on finger triggers, not just rumble.

Imagine a programmable actuator that pushes back on your finger

[wicked oak]

normally, force feedback IS a kind of haptic feedback

[heady parrot]

the XBone gamepad "finger rumblers" feel quite good, but they dont push back

[wicked oak]

is just that its not going to happen at the moment, it tends to be bulky

so they just vibrate

[heady parrot]

also, a traditional rumble motor is just a motor rotating with a weight.. That is not what the Oculus Touch has

[wicked oak]

really?

[hard light]

what does Touch have?

[wicked oak]

i think its a piezoelectric thing

[heady parrot]

Touch uses a proper linear actuator.. Best way to describe it is like a speaker with a weight glued to the membrane

[hard light]

ah

[wicked oak]

i think Vive has both

im sure that thing does have a motor with a weight

[heady parrot]

its far better than what the Vive has

[hard light]

Vive only has normal motor vibration to my knowledge

[wicked oak]

its less power, i found that

and does a fuckton of noise

[hard light]

it's not great, but it's kind of functional

[wicked oak]

its also higher frequency, and faster

[heady parrot]

Im working on some things to push the envelope of usage of haptics in games, hoping to publish a blog and OS code once I'm done.

Been working on "haptic textures" to simulate the feel of surfaces and give objects a sense of weight when you pick them up

[wicked oak]

damn

[heady parrot]

the Touch haptics is quite amazing 😃 its a step above what's been done before

[wicked oak]

i just do vibration when you shoot stuff

[hard light]

give it 12 months before the Vive has it too xD

[wicked oak]

or a small strong vibration when you wack something with the sword

[heady parrot]

thats what 99.9% of everyone does 😃 but you can do so much more

[wicked oak]

Vive v2

the new controllers

siggi, how?

my haptics are very simple, probably too much, but i would like to make them better

[heady parrot]

amber I'm counting on it 😃 and thats why I love seeing competition, it will develop the tech faster to mainstream

[wicked oak]

what are you doign?

[hard light]

to my knowledge you can't do much more than simple vibration in UE4 anyway :/

[wicked oak]

nothing disallowing you from doing direct API access

[heady parrot]

Im feeding haptic values procedurally based on what you are doing. Imagine feeding an audio sample to the actuator and then "scrobbling" the playback on that based on user movement and actions

[wicked oak]

and that works?

[heady parrot]

amber not true. with the latest SDK you can actually play back an audio sample through the haptics

[wicked oak]

mine is just a linear jump

lol that is goddamn hilarious

[heady parrot]

yes it works. It's a bit tricky atm but I'm hoping to publish my work once done 😃 just too many things to work on atm

[wicked oak]

im adding the 3rd map and hard mode to DWVR

so it can start to be content complete for the beta/earlyaccess/whatever version

[heady parrot]

https://github.com/Oculus-VR/UnrealEngine/blob/4.14/Engine/Plugins/Runtime/OculusInput/Source/Private/OculusInput.cpp

Look at void FOculusInput::SetHapticFeedbackValues

[wicked oak]

cool stuff

[clever sky]

You can use float values to drive rumble with Vive controllers...

So in theory you could so something similarish.

With animation curves and what not.

[heady parrot]

it all comes down to attack and decay, ie how fast the haptic rumble device can respond to changes

the Oculus once runs at 150Hz if memory serves me right

the API changes are in the engine itself now, but I havent tested if they are hooked up to the SteamVR classes.

[clever sky]

Yeah... I think the Vive ones are around er... 30ms minimum step change

30Hz

[wicked oak]

they already do animation curves

its playing back a haptic feedback curve

it has amplitude and frequency curves

[clever sky]

The Vive ones?

[wicked oak]

works on both

its a ue4 blueprint thing

it can also run on the gamepad i thin

[heady parrot]

yeah I need to play more with the Vive haptics, we are probably releasing our game on Vive too

[clever sky]

How do you call them seperately? I just have a single intensity and duration node 😛

[full junco]

is this as awesome as it sounds? 😄

https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine/commit/af9d6262473492e4e9850133a128c95663ebb5be

http://puu.sh/syv1a/75d6662ed5.png

thats a commit for 4.14.1

[heady parrot]

1ms is quite big yes 😃

[full junco]

thats super huge. thats more saving than I ever got by using instanced stereo rendering I think

[clever sky]

So we're getting a nice present for 4.14.1?

[full junco]

yeah seems so!

and I'm on newest master and don't even have that yet because epic is so extremely slow with dev-rendering merges lately 😩

[wicked oak]

1 ms in vr is a 10% improvement

a 10% improvement is HUGE

[full junco]

https://media.giphy.com/media/NM2SEXpp58mwU/giphy.gif

[raven halo]

is this real?

😮

[heady parrot]

They recently said they are aiming to release 1.14.1 in about 2 weeks

[full junco]

who cares about when they release it, you can always just pick the commit 😀

but it is strange that they wait so long with the release of the first hotfix

[heady parrot]

well, they are prob busy on 4.15 😃 last time they talked about it they were aiming at the end of the year

which places it hella close to 4.14.1

[full junco]

yeah

I'm just using master, mostly because the RMC async collision stuff only works on master currently I think 😄

1st december should finally be the next dev-rendering merge, will be the first one since almost 4 weeks, so it will be yuuuge

[heady parrot]

oh you working with Chris?

[full junco]

I just use the RMC

[heady parrot]

its great 😃 I saw massive improvement when I converted my procedural mesh examples over from PMC

[full junco]

yeah the PMC is really outdated now

[heady parrot]

Chris took in a lot of feedback from me 😃 I was .. very frustrated about the PMC yeah

and the answers I was getting from Epic were basically "thats not the usecase we created it for".. /facepalm

What you using it for? voxel engine or what?

[full junco]

yeah voxel stuff

[heady parrot]

sweet 😃 got anything to show?

[full junco]

not yet, but hopefully soon 😄

[heady parrot]

so far the best one I've seen is Everquest Landmark. Really makes me wish we could do a big world with multiplayer like that

I mean more games like that 😃

[full junco]

ok, don't really know that

[heady parrot]

it was a dual contouring voxel engine

[wicked oak]

you can buy it

is voxelfarm

[heady parrot]

wait, what? EQ:L used voxelfarm? I never realized that

[wicked oak]

yes

[heady parrot]

nice!

[wicked oak]

they did have VERY close integration with voxelfarm team

i guess they licensed it with source and shared stuff

[heady parrot]

http://www.voxelfarm.com/games.html

Damn, I might consider making something with this then 😃

[clever sky]

EQ:L is voxelfarm 😛

[real needle]

voxelfarm is pretty amazing, I think @proper pumice has some live production experience with it (I think he mentioned a few problems with how it was being used)

[clever sky]

Anyone wanna help me make a VR-RPG with it? 😛

[proper pumice]

yeah, voxelfarm is actually pretty solid now

Voxelfarm 2 was a fucking disaster

but Voxelfarm 3 is pretty legit

[heady parrot]

I'd love to hear from anyone using it in UE4

cool 😄

is the perf ok? and supports realtime modifications just fine?

[wicked oak]

its kind of the point of it

[heady parrot]

there is a trial, I'm going to check it out soon 😃

[raven halo]

hay anyone had any luck with MSAA in 4.14? I have just turned it on, and everything looks aliased, and I do mean everything. Toggling the anti aliasing with "show antialiasing" essentially confirms that the MSAA is not doing anything

what am I missing? D:

[heady parrot]

console command 😃

r.MSAACount 4

[raven halo]

i checked! it's 4 by default

[heady parrot]

you can also put it in your .ini file

oh

[full junco]

@raven halo it only works with forward rendering, you probably try it with deferred

[heady parrot]

only aliasing I've seen is on specular and wrong normal maps 😃

[raven halo]

it is forward yeah!

I'm using forward since 4.13

[full junco]

sure?

[clever sky]

Interesting. I can see MSAA works for me.

But it's also a big performance hit.

[heady parrot]

deferred smooths over quite a lot of artifacts that become noticable with forward

[raven halo]

100% sure of the fact that I'm using forward

[clever sky]

Might as well just up screen res

and use one of the cheaper AA solutions.

[raven halo]

out of curiosity, what screen percentage are you all guys using?

[clever sky]

I'm using 150

[raven halo]

holy crap

[heady parrot]

default atm, but I've done dynamic quality scaling in the past

[full junco]

high SP is super expensive

[heady parrot]

Valkyrie uses it for example

[clever sky]

Oh yeah. I need to make an option to change that 😛

[raven halo]

Does Unreal have a system to dynamically change screen percentage?

[full junco]

no

[heady parrot]

no, but there is some stuff for it in Oculus's latest integrations

its not hard to build that system though, at least for PC

console is a bit trickier

But with MSAA you got yet another variable to dynamically scale 😃

so scale screen res AND MSAA based on perf

[proper pumice]

scale screen res and MSAA is brutal

(on perf)

[heady parrot]

the whole idea is let the perf decide those factors

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdL3WC_oBO4

its the method outlined in this talk

[mighty carbon]

on Gear VR with MSAA performance can be solid 60 fps.. Not sure what's different between that and desktop MSAA

[full junco]

is it fine to basically call r.screenpercentage XX in ue4 every frame?

[heady parrot]

I wouldnt do every frame but you can get close to it yeah. The method we used was slightly different, but based on the same concept

for console you need to change the res without reallocating memory for the frame buffers

[wicked oak]

ue4 does this automagically

with Oculus SDK

at least thats what the docs says

[heady parrot]

in the latest SDKs I think it does yeah

[wicked oak]

i havent tested, its probably a thing for the oculsu branch

[heady parrot]

not sure if its on by default?

[wicked oak]

its not

[full junco]

would be good if the SDK just does it

no reason why every dev would have to care about implementing that

[heady parrot]

search for PixelDensityAdaptive

they shouldnt 😃

[full junco]

what about steamvr?

[heady parrot]

but when working in VR you sometimes have to implement these things before they become mainstream

[mighty carbon]

@clever sky what RPG are you working on ?

[clever sky]

Not working on one yet. Still putting together my locomotion demo.

Having a bit too much fun with it, but it's coming along 😄

[heady parrot]

I'm still waiting on that! 😉

[clever sky]

I put collectibles in it!

It's like the best collectibles ever!

Would be cool to do an RPG with minecraft elements in it 😛 especially in VR.

Dig with a shovel! Really dig!

[heady parrot]

yes 😃

motion controllersr + dual contoured voxels.. see some possibilities there .)

[clever sky]

Alternatively, magic effects and explosions would leave nice impact craters all over the place.

[heady parrot]

then after some time all your are left with is a giant hole in the ground 😃

[mighty carbon]

http://www.roadtovr.com/next-gen-lighthouse-base-station-bring-rapid-cost-reductions/

[clever sky]

Hehe 😛

BTW, does open level unload the map you're moving away from?

Because I seem to be having a bit of a memoy leak issue after loading up landscape mountain...

[heady parrot]

depends on how you travel

[clever sky]

How you travel?

[mighty carbon]

not if you force it to unload

[clever sky]

How do your force unload?

[heady parrot]

how you move between the maps, there are ways to keep things alive

[clever sky]

I'm just calling open level on trigger?

[mighty carbon]

don't know yet. I only worked with streaming level in 😃

[heady parrot]

but more often than not a "leak" is just a hard pointer somewhere

[clever sky]

Hard pointer? What's that mean? D:

[mighty carbon]

there is a node in BP to unload level, I am sure

[clever sky]

You can unload streaming level

I'll probably have to go the level streaming route. Not sure if that'll fix the problem though.

[heady parrot]

not sure if you have to worry about hard vs weak pointers in BPs 😃 but basically if you keep a reference to something it wont get garbage collected

[clever sky]

Hmmm. Good to know. But I don't think it applies in this situation...

As I haven't made any references to the maps other than through load level.

open level

Actually, it's quite bad. Even after I quit UE, it still stays open in task manager

and even after force quitting, the computer is still lagging and stuttering.

Oh well. puzzle for tomorrow. Going to sleep, night.

[mighty carbon]

o/

[mighty carbon]

Is it possible to make a living on VR market currently ? (game dev)

[wicked oak]

if you spam steam, for sure

im about to release my first VR game with some effort

ill probably do a couple more fast-games for steam

[silk lodge]

either you get lucky with a great vr game

[wicked oak]

at a couple dollars or similar

but steam is not a good market, its getting spammed

[silk lodge]

or you do work for big companies that pay lots of monies

nobody cares about bad games

nobody

good games rise to the top fast

[storm vortex]

Good games need to also have single player support though. Some of my favorite VR games are only multiplayer and there aren't always people playing them.

I'm a big fan of Art of Fight, but hardly anyone plays it.

[silk lodge]

you've gotta get a bunch of vive friends to play the multiplayer games you want

[full junco]

I'd always first do singleplayer and later MP

[silk lodge]

I have over 40, so I can get games going

also helps to have 2 local players 😃

[full junco]

but if I would release a game on steam then I would expect that I would work on that for a few more years before its considered done

[storm vortex]

I think that is something to consider though, not everyone has huge friend lists on steam or friends that have VR. I only have a few friends with the Vive and they are obsessed with playing Overwatch so hardly join me.

[silk lodge]

start hosting matches on http://vrlfg.net/

start adding everyone who plays the games you like

there's 11 in art of the fight right now. best get on there 😃

[storm vortex]

Working now, but maybe later 😃