virtual-reality

[clever sky]

Maybe I don't know what the problem is, but it's a hell of a lot easier for me or anyone else to have a crack at the issue if there's more information 😃

[zinc violet]

heh, old news but I found it funny still

http://www.roadtovr.com/unreal-engine-4-14-forward-renderer-vr-optimized-improvements/

that's SO misleading

they said 22% improvement for forward, mention MSAA in the article but never say anything about MSAA perf cost

if people just read the article, they'd think it's 22% faster with MSAA

[full junco]

@zinc violet well don't expect journalists to cover tech stuff correctly

[zinc violet]

http://www.roadtovr.com/fove-0-begins-shipping-eye-tracking-headset-month/

@full junco yeah, but it's still silly as they clearly said the 22% and -25% figures same time, it looks like the person who wrote that delibrately just decided not to mention that

[full junco]

@zinc violet the more "wow factor" there is for a reader of the article, the more likely it is for that article to get shared 😛

so more ad money

[granite jacinth]

Hmm

FOVE compatible with SteamVR

games

I guess they mean only the ones with controller support

non-motion

[zinc violet]

yeah

[granite jacinth]

That's still kind of cool

[zinc violet]

with new steamvr supported headsets around, we should expect more standalone steamvr supported motion controllers too

[granite jacinth]

But, I mean...

Rift is priced at $600

no motcons

[zinc violet]

http://www.roadtovr.com/nolo-mobile-vr-positional-tracking-system-compatible-steamvr-ces-2017/

[granite jacinth]

Hmm, I saw that in CES

well

[zinc violet]

it can't be good though

just one camera?

[granite jacinth]

I saw it via FB live

One camera can get it done

[zinc violet]

how could it even track behind your back?

[granite jacinth]

Depends on what the usecase is

If it is only meant for front action games

then it will work fine

[zinc violet]

I guess

or you can locale the camera really up high

[granite jacinth]

Although two is the min for full 360 rotation

And 3 has been said to be perfect

I mean, if you can ADD this

to existing lighthouses

so you can have 3, that would be cool

a bit cheaper than current LHs

Ah

I saw that video on NOLO

that thing sits pretty high on the mobile hmd

Although he didn't do a full 360

it was pretty decent rotation

[zinc violet]

you'd want to be able to do 360 with mobile hmd though

as you are not bound by wires anymore

[granite jacinth]

hmm,

he did go 180 on the very first frame after putting it on , but it didn't show anything on screen, so I am skeptical

[zinc violet]

me too

[granite jacinth]

But anyway, I am pretty sure the minimum for ANY VR HMD is still 2 for true 360 support

[zinc violet]

and 100 bucks for something subpar is still a lot of money which you could put into proper headset + tracker combo already

[granite jacinth]

Well, see, that's the thing. This is meant for those early adopters

Like, I already have a GearVR

had it for ages

barely use it

[zinc violet]

technically, you could use optical tracking attached to HMD only

[granite jacinth]

But, hey, this thing comes out, let me throw an extra 100 at it

and maybe get some new use out of it

That's their big idea anyway

[zinc violet]

I'm sure that's what future headsets will do, but it'll take a while

[granite jacinth]

I don't know

I saw the new stuff from Vive

gloves, gun attachment

etc

Pretty sexy stuff

[zinc violet]

http://www.theverge.com/ces/2017/1/2/14150054/lenovo-vr-headset-windows-holographic

that thing is marketed to do tracking like that

but we only see in the future if they can pull it off

it would make a lot of sense though to do it like that if possible

as it wouldn't rely on external stuff anymore

although, no idea how they'd do motion controllers with such thing 😄

the Vive attachment thing will be handy for sure

did they tell if you could have multiple?

would be nice to tag certain gameobjects with it

like a steering wheel in a car

you basically wouldn't need motion controllers in a VR racing game but you'd want to be able to locate the steering wheel easily

[granite jacinth]

http://www.roadtovr.com/htc-vive-tracker-makes-vr-more-immersive-with-specialized-accessories-hands-on/

[zinc violet]

yeah, they only demonstrate it with one tracker there

I'm curious if you could have several on same game

also http://www.roadtovr.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/vive-tracker-and-accessories-16-680x383.jpg

that doesn't look very safe 😄

[uneven moon]

I figured out a way to copy the assets from another level into my VR template level but when I go into VR preview mode, the stereoscopic is all messed up

Any idea why?

[granite jacinth]

How did you copy the assets over @uneven moon ?

[uneven moon]

I added the map I needed assets from as a sub-level, I hid the primary level and selected all the assets in the map, copied them, hid the sub-level, un-hid the primary level, selected it, pasted all the assets, deleted the sub-level

I had the VR pawn where I originally had it but this time with all the new assets in the scene

I had the same issue when I took the VR pawn and placed it in the other level instead, the stereo was really messed up and things were warped strangely

[real needle]

@granite jacinth The image with a rifle and a gun, those are ""PPGuns" and the version I tried of them was terrible, but they were also simulating key presses for input. With the puck they can call same input event as motioncontroller trigger, which is sweet

Using it's wireless which is much better

[granite jacinth]

That's pretty cool

[real needle]

@uneven moon Do you have a post process volume with screenpercentage set on it?

Check in world outliner

Unbound post process doesn't work very well for stereo, some settings break stuff

[uneven moon]

@real needle I don't see any such setting on my postprocessvolume

[real needle]

@uneven moon Just search for screenpercentage

It's under aliasing settings I think

[uneven moon]

@real needle I deleted the post process and it's still there

[real needle]

Restarted computer? Steam/SteamVR? Is it a source project or bp only?

Did you set number of players to anything else than 1?

[uneven moon]

I'm using the VR template (Motion Controller map)

That map is set as the default and I just imported the mesh from the other level

The level I imported was a Showcase map from a pack I bought from the UE4 store

Is it possible his settings are being carried over? All I did was copy paste the assets

[real needle]

When bringing assets into your project from another project it is best practice to Right click the folder with contents that you want, and hit "Migrate". Then select to migrate to your new project. Make sure they're the same engine versions, otherwise things can break

When bringing assets into your project from another project it is best practice to Right click the folder with contents that you want, and hit "Migrate". Then select to migrate to your new project. Make sure they're the same engine versions, otherwise things can break

[wintry escarp]

rift and vive are starting to look old at an amazing speed

[mighty carbon]

old, not obsolete

[clever sky]

@wintry escarp why do you say that?

[mighty carbon]

😛

https://issues.unrealengine.com/issue/UE-40287 << please upvote ?

http://www.daydreamdistrict.com/nolo-vr-brings-room-scale-steamvr-games-daydream-vr-gearvr-cardboard/ << too bad it's front facing only for now

http://www.windowscentral.com/these-are-first-windows-holographic-headsets-hp-dell-and-more

[clever sky]

Might be interested in getting one of those if you could somehow make the Vive or Touch controllers simultaneously compatible with different headsets.

Otherwise VR with just the HMD is so 2014.

[mighty carbon]

hah

[real needle]

I'm stuck with a silly error that I just can't get rid of. The first map that loads will not track the motioncontrollers. If I reload same map w same options, it works just fine...

This is in standalone

@clever sky I'm waiting for the SteamVR tracking HMDs from third parties, haven't seen any yet

[leaden jackal]

Anyone know when Oculus deposits funds from store sales? Is it 30 days like Valve?

[mighty carbon]

if they don't feel like giving it to you, they won't!

/s

[wintry escarp]

zaptruder: new things make them look big and clunky

motorsep: you tried that ue4 remote addon?

[mighty carbon]

no, what is it for, @wintry escarp ?

[mighty carbon]

http://uploadvr.com/alloy-intel-ces-hands-on/

[wicked oak]

oh god its ugly

[mighty carbon]

and heavy, and drifting badly

[wicked oak]

TLDR, trash

Oculus 6 month older version is a lot better

[mighty carbon]

yeah, it seems that while there is a lot of innovative stuff coming out, Rift/Vive are the only ones that are truly consumer friendly and mass market ready desktop VR devices (and PSVR if we take consoles into account)

and Gear VR of course

[wicked oak]

well, SteamVR/Vive is the "first"

with the backing of Valve research + HTC factories and experience

Oculus has the best minds of ANY company (carmack, abrash, etc)

and its a company focused on VR, with accesss to the endless facebook money

[mighty carbon]

• Samsung

(I keep my fingers crossed for S8)

[wicked oak]

for sure

Lets hope samsung has learnt

its already a HUGE phone, let it be a little bit fatter

and cram a better battery on it

[mighty carbon]

it actually is going to be slimmer than Note 7

and that's a concern

(slimmer because SoC is 10nm vs 14nm in Note 7)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2017/01/06/samsung-galaxy-s8-edge-flat-design/#398aab0c37a4

lol, unbelievable how many leaks for S8 come out every day

well, if that's the case, I'll go with vanilla S8

wtf?! I tweeted at VulkanAPI asking if stuff in Mobile Vulkan is ready for Gear VR. They retwitted my twit as if they have no business in working on API

bizarre ... I thought 2017 should be a better year 🙄 😒

[mighty carbon]

https://i.reddituploads.com/ddea5302ded04c369fc8d724f15ac920?fit=max&h=1536&w=1536&s=8713f0302b19762d7b1392de72dd230e

interesting stats

(safe for work)

[real needle]

Phew, UI for online gameplay in VR is quite a task. I'm able to emulate tooltips though which helps a lot!

[mighty carbon]

congrats @wicked oak

DWVR is on Oculus Store !

Comfort: Intense

[wicked oak]

it is

but its on Gallry

wich is the least important store page

ive sent them a message about what should i do to end up in Early Access

its logical its on gallry, its still buggy

[real needle]

@wicked oak How do you deal with checking for rift users if they're playing through steam?

Get HMDDevice returns the platform, no device

[wicked oak]

still works

just fine

also, in steam you have to add the launch options

works automagically when you do that

and i dont know, but it works for me

its allways worked

even when launchging through steam without that launch options

[real needle]

Huh, I see

I'm assuming GetHMDDevice returns the plugin that's (mainly?) being used

[storm vortex]

Does GetHMDDevice return the type of headset being used Vive vs Rift?

[wicked oak]

with vive it returns steamvr

but at least in my case, it opens on oculus anyway, even if you launch it on steam

[real needle]

For me it just returns SteamVR, even when I'm using a rift but I'll try your fix

[opal bobcat]

psvr sounds like a nightmare, but people will buy that crap anyways just because its the official POS that you use w/a PS4

[wicked oak]

it works

and its better than a DK2

in fact, it runs DWVR perfectly well

at same settings as PC

(to be fair, DWVR is geometry/drawcall bound, so ps4 has an advantage there)

plus 60 fps instead of 90

[opal bobcat]

so what everyone is saying about its shit tracking is exaturated?

[wicked oak]

no, its true

[opal bobcat]

i understand it is supposed to be comfortable

but the rift is plenty comfortable for me

[wicked oak]

psvr is super confortable

the best headset for that

becouse it doesnt push to your face

you have the weight in your forehead with that circle thing

[opal bobcat]

and im pleased to see htc trying to correct its ergonomics with the new audio strap

aslong as its well reviewed i will be purchasing it

yeah its like a welders mask

i wonder why oculus didnt do that sometimes

i think my dad was complaining about that too

he would prefer the welders mask style because that's what he's used to

[mighty carbon]

So, PSVR doesn't come off your head if you move erratically ?

[opal bobcat]

hopefuly vr wont require me to ever move my head erratically

[mighty carbon]

it sure looks like it would come up if you move all over the place and look up and down at sharp angles, suddenly

why not?

[opal bobcat]

because thats uncomfortable

iw ould never ask a user to do something like that

[mighty carbon]

not all the time, but at certain moments your game might have some stuff a way down and a way up

I would

[opal bobcat]

well that kind of movement is not what i consider erratic

[mighty carbon]

While there are couch VR experiences, there should be VR experiences that replicate real-life physicality

[opal bobcat]

like a swordfighting sim

yeah, im not writing any of those

[mighty carbon]

@wicked oak can you please try the following with your PSVR - look down quickly (as if you are bending over a ledge) and look up (at zenith) sharply.

[opal bobcat]

i was doing some ledge work on my project last night

[mighty carbon]

(probably over something soft to catch PSVR if it falls off 😃 )

[opal bobcat]

since i can effectively create terrain at runtime i was making these big building like structures and then teleporting up to the top and looking down ata the scene from high above

that was kinda fun

[mighty carbon]

https://www.vrfocus.com/2017/01/bbc-earth-to-launch-three-vr-experiences-in-collaboration-with-oculus/

[mighty carbon]

http://uploadvr.com/job-simulator-3-million/

Tbh, I would never pay money for this

:/

I guess I don't understand current generation of gamers :/

[spring pond]

It was bundled with every preorder vive, so thats a good amount of sales right there

It's also a decent intro to VR. Not much of a game. I met some of the owlchmy staff at connect/devdays. Really rad dudes

[mighty carbon]

So, I am guessing those sales numbers don't come from individual software sales

[mighty carbon]

https://www.cnet.com/videos/we-survived-samsung-gear-vr-4d-experience-ces-2017/

https://www.cnet.com/videos/we-survived-samsung-gear-vr-4d-experience-ces-2017/

hah, I wonder where I can buy that one

[wicked oak]

ok, 20 sales on oculus store says the stats tracker

but its a lagged stat tracker

also, no marketing of any kind, its just "there". Wich makes it different than steam

Steam version is getting basically no sales anymore, i wonder how this version will do

[mighty carbon]

that's how it works anywhere

Steam, GoG, Origin, etc.

they distribute your game, like Walmart or GameStop

they don't do any marketing / PR

[wicked oak]

Oculus is more like a walmart

they put it on the shelves

and its easily seen

Steam is a blackhole

once you are out of the new releases/topseller lists, you cant be seen

but you do get a LOT of traffic that first day

thats why im interested on seeing the stats

[mighty carbon]

Tweet @ Oculus with the link to your game and maybe a GIF video. They usually re-tweet.

[wicked oak]

oh, they do?

will try

as tomorrow #screenshotsaturday

with a flashy gif

what i want to see is how the "not first day" sales go on Oculus store

you basically cant find my game browsing through the VR lists in oculus

but in oculus you do

can you go and leave me a nice review?

i think if you get it with key you can do review too

[mighty carbon]

I don't have Rift o.O

[wintry escarp]

try that remote addon and see if it lets you use phone straight from desktop

[mighty carbon]

why?

it's no use for Gear VR anyway

[digital marlin]

Job simulator isn't a game.

Well, to me anyway. It's a great demo and very good to introduce people to VR

And it's tight.

[feral maple]

Anyone know if there's a way I can use the Oculus avatar/hand stuff in UE4, without needing Visual Studio? I'm a blueprint person, and so far every method seems to require it, in order to compile some special version of the engine.. >_<

[still marsh]

Bundles, sure... But I think it's pretty obvious Job Sim is an outlier. I imagine most VR games are struggling. Just like most games.

[digital marlin]

Anyone who is making a VR game to turn a profit is probably going to be disappointed.

[still marsh]

Depends how much it costs to live in your apartment or something

lol

(But yeah, agreed.)

For now.

[digital marlin]

Yeah for now.

[full junco]

http://puu.sh/tdTl6/76067db184.png

do DF shadows work well in VR?

[digital marlin]

hey did the latest hotfix break UMGs?

[real needle]

@full junco I haven't messed with it in a while, but during the dk2 late dk2 days it did some weird things to the right eye. That was before instanced though

@digital marlin Not for me

[digital marlin]

hrmm okay, thanks

[full junco]

@real needle well I'm not using instanced stereo rendering, that just wastes performance

[real needle]

@full junco I thought instanced cut down on draw time?

Since it doesn't do it twice?

[full junco]

it might improve cpu performance by 1% but increases gpu time by 10%, so absolutely not worth it

for some people it can be worth it, if you have a lot of draw calls (more than 2000 I would guess)

[real needle]

I perceived an uptick in performance, and we're certainly not as high as 2k

But perceived... eyes fool you

[full junco]

I profiled it and it made it a lot slower

[real needle]

Why haven't I seen anyone mention that

[full junco]

then you haven't payed attention to it, I heard many other people say the same

[real needle]

For epics template they just say "turn it on"

I guess not

[full junco]

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?110953-Instanced-Stereo-Rendering-increases-GPU-time-up-to-257-why-such-a-huge-performance-decrease

[real needle]

Thanks, there was a couple good answers there

Do you use frame smoothing? I'm unsure if it even works for stereo

[full junco]

why should I use frame smoothing in vr?

can you even enable that in vr?

[real needle]

Well, Ryan mentioned "Make sure both frame smoothing and vsync are disabled and then use the stat unit console command."

As in they usually being on

[full junco]

well I always had that stuff disabled

[real needle]

YEah me too

Which is why I asked

I had to turn off interleaved reprojection in 4.14 because it broke scene capture components

And I see a bit of stutter now and then, which I didn't before

[full junco]

interleaved reprojection?

[real needle]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/358720/discussions/0/385429254937377076/

It's weird though because it shouldn't change individual frames

It only kicks in when it's several frames

But it must be doing something else as well to affect stutter and such

[full junco]

well that stuff is not making it smooth anyways, 45 always stutters with that

only atw and ASW can fix that

or valves asynchronous reprojection

[real needle]

That's what I'm saying, it's weird that turning it off gave me worse perf

It should be the opposite

I'm using asynchronous, so it might be an artifact of that

Haven't actually tested without both...

[full junco]

valve is slow with adding support for amd for asynchronous reprojection

so couldn't test it yet

[real needle]

Anyone in north america still online with a vive? I need to test some of my new net code and see how it holds up. In my tests I've seen a horrendous amounts of dropped packets because of VOIP

Testing VR multiplayer on my own is a mess...

[storm vortex]

Don't you guys developer without reprojection enabled so you can target stable frames and then leave it as a safety net for the end users?

@real needle I'm on now with a Vive

[real needle]

@storm vortex Reprojection is usually a good indicator that something is wrong ^^

[wicked oak]

i do leave ASW on, but i capture profiling with stat startfile

and then look at that

i try to avoid the gpu time to be more than 9 ms

it also gives me an fps graph, so i see when i drop from 90 locked into 45 reprojection

[real needle]

my cpu bottlenecks when I'm running stat startfile, so I'm not getting very accurate results

[full junco]

@real needle what cpu?

it should only slow it down if you have put too many stat markers in your c++ code, but I think you don't have that

but when I tried to stat functions that are called hundreds of millions of times per second I definitely saw it slowing down to something like 1 fps 😂

[full junco]

regular fire sprite particles look really weird in VR

is there any good alternative to use?

[graceful junco]

You can try the way nvidia did it the fire in their Funhouse, with nvidia flow. Other than that, not sure if you can get a nice volumetric fire in VR.

[full junco]

that sounds a bit too expensive...

[limber rose]

@real needle if you still need help testing, I am EST time zone, at our space 5 days a week

[mighty carbon]

it's freaking cold here ❄ 😱

[wicked oak]

i dont get any slowdown on stat startfile

and im heavily CPU bound (drawcalls)

i guess its becouse it is just offloaded to one of the extra threads

[safe hamlet]

While wearing and playing with a Vive headset, can you mirror a different camera to the screen (instead of the VR view)?

I think there must be a way, but so far I haven't found it. Does anybody know how to do this?

[full junco]

whow can I disable reflections? http://puu.sh/tehsb/f4e1c7a439.png

I dont have any reflections...

SSR intensity is set to 0

[clever sky]

Hey, are you guys doing any sort of black-out for when players decide to stick their heads into walls and other things?

[full junco]

I turn it black

I fade it into black the closer the player gets to a wall

[clever sky]

What happens when they decide to continue sticking their heads past the walls?

[wicked oak]

i push the player back

ive been able to give players a charcater movement

and its attached to their body

so if they try to get through a wall, they get pushed back

[full junco]

my walls are all very thick, so if the player actually decided to go through (which happens like never) black fades away again

[wicked oak]

tlrd, they literally cant go through anything

[clever sky]

Hmmm.

I'm trying to do too much fancy shit with mine.

I'm blacking it out. But then I'm also having visible room boundaries.

Is there a good way of doing black out that's attached to the camera... that still allows some materials to come through?

[full junco]

I think I will eventually trace from where the player was before he got into wall to where the head is now and if it hits something (the wall), it stays black

[clever sky]

Because that's kinda my struggling point. I'm faking it by using a plane in front of the camera

[full junco]

you could use PP to turn it black and exclude certain objects with custom depth

[clever sky]

Hmmm.

Sounds good. Any good tutorials out there providing a step by step?

[full junco]

I dont think so

[clever sky]

So. how do oyu exclude objects with custom depth?

[full junco]

tick the checkbox somewhere to render it to custom depth

and in a PP material use that to mask your output

[clever sky]

Struggle town here. 😛 So you make a post process material... in special things you need to do to it? I've just made it 0 emissive.

Then I plug the material into blendables in the post process

[full junco]

0 emissive is black, yeah

right

[clever sky]

... and it has no controllability

it just goes from nothing to full black

There are 2 sliders... 0 to 1 next to the material node - 1 for full effect

and Blend Weight.

And it's on as long as both are above 0.

it's fully black, as long as both are above 0 I mean.

[full junco]

then something with the custom depth is wrong I guess

that can be tricky to setup correctly

[clever sky]

Any guides for this out there?

[full junco]

well some stuff there definitely is, have you googled for "unreal engine 4 custom depth" already?

then you find something like this: http://www.tomlooman.com/the-many-uses-of-custom-depth-in-unreal-4/

[clever sky]

Yeah, I've had a look at that briefly before. Was hoping that there might be something more specific to what I'm doing here 😛

Ok. I'll wrap my head around that.

[full junco]

just making stuff black is way easier than outlines and stuff like that

[clever sky]

You'd hope so!

[clever sky]

Yay. I fixed my problems! 😛

And it had nothing to do with the post process stuff. (although that's still a minor issue).

[sturdy coral]

@full junco reflection apply is I think for spherical and box reflection captures; would include skylight as well.

[full junco]

@sturdy coral hm ok, I don't have any of those reflection captures in my level since I use no static lighting

I do have a skylight though (movable)

how is skylight related to reflections?

[sturdy coral]

The skylight is blended in with the reflection captures; moveable has some caveats

turn on the reflections view in the editor and you should be able to see what is present in the reflection environment; typically skylight will be setup with a distance threshold where it excludes nearby geometry and tries to only capture the sky and distant meshes

[vague granite]

Hey folks! New here, thought I'd say hey 🙏

[clever sky]

Sup

[full junco]

@sturdy coral well I hate these sky reflections...

because those even happen when I'm not seeing the sky due to being inside something

I think its impossible though to turn them off? or is there a way to do that?

[opal bobcat]

anyone ever seen a diagram with the oculus touch axis of rotation?

w/regaurds to yaw, pitch and roll

kinda like this pic only for the oculus touch:

https://developer3.oculus.com/images/documentation/pcsdk/latest/oculus-head-model.png

[mighty carbon]

you should probably ask on Oculus Dev forums @opal bobcat

[opal bobcat]

well i went with my instinct and the axis i needed was infact roll

just funny that no idagram like that exists

[mighty carbon]

ask them and note that docs are lacking.. Just don't start with "f u Oculus" 😛

[opal bobcat]

well unless i find any new bugs i'm pretty much finished now

does the start content that comes with the editor, is that free to redistribute?

like that vr level, the one with the platonic solids in it

im using that one

or do i have to make my own level

[wicked oak]

in ue4 you just grab the motion controller component

its local transform is the hand transform

[opal bobcat]

nods

yeah i guessed it might be like that so i just used the roll from the motion controller and it was the axis i needed'

[wicked oak]

plus is 100% multiplatform

same thing works on everything, its great

[opal bobcat]

now the most boring part, documentation and commenting

[sturdy coral]

@full junco you need a static or stationary skylight and I think you can have the skylight have shadows; with a movable skylight like you have the only way to get skylight shadows is a distance field thing that looks awesome, but is expensive and doesn't work in VR

[zenith charm]

Is there any point I should be using reset positon and orientation node? everytime I would my z position messes up if I teleport for example (always on the floor instead of the "floor level" height wokring correctly) what might anyelse be doing? 😃

[wintry escarp]

damn ue4 to hell, 6000 shaders compiling again...even though I didn't change any materials

[digital marlin]

ugh I was working with materials. On every save it's like a 30 second wait

[mighty carbon]

@wintry escarp I seriously doubt it's UE4 issue

[wintry escarp]

hmmm, gearvr app wont run

it keeps trying to launch cardboard

from ue4

gearvr plugin is on, osig is in place

cardboard uninstalled and folder deleted

reboot phone

[mighty carbon]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/538790/

[mighty carbon]

http://360rumors.blogspot.com/2017/01/ces-2017-nolo-adds-roomscale-vr-to.html

[mighty carbon]

laggy 😦

[wintry escarp]

nonlo is laggy?

hmmm well at least it works, now they just need to speed it up

[zinc violet]

http://www.roadtovr.com/noitom-hi5-vr-glove-htc-vive-finger-tracking-hands-on/

[mighty carbon]

http://hi5vrglove.com/ vs https://manus-vr.com/

[real needle]

@full junco It's an i7 skylake, so I really shouldnt have any issues. I should point out that this is using the realtime visualizer. I was hoping it would be this new amazing profiling tool but I just had a bunch of problems and I only want to deal with it if I really have to.

On your second question about sprites: Yes they look pretty bad, but you can mitigate it by making sure they don't move with camera etc. I use non mesh sprite emitters for stuff that's outside the players parallax range. Everything else should be meshes

And I'm just barely using anything on tick, never bottlenecks otherwise

@mighty carbon I'm still waiting to see manus version with SteamVR. I think it'll be great. The Noitom one definitely did seem to perform very well though

Question: Regarding the Widget Interaction Component, is the Virtual User Index only relevant for multiplayer? I'm running two clients who each has two components, and everything seems to work just fine

[zinc violet]

noitom video didn't impress me

guy tried to pick up things normally and it always failed

he had to go slo-mo mode to be able to grab things

[digital marlin]

when creating a user widget my window loses focus

Anyone know how to ensure it doesn't lose focus? Makes it real annoying when creating / destroying a widget.

[full junco]

@sturdy coral the only reason I have a skylight is to make darker areas less than 100% dark. I have shadows disabled on skylight

@real needle im not sure how I should use meshes... I'm not a particles guy, I just take what epic has in their demos or what's available on the marketplace

[mighty carbon]

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

just finished working on context sensitive crosshair (for Gear VR)

[clever sky]

I remember people in here saying that TPCast was full of shit when first announced.

2ms impossible!

Dammit you doubters! I could've maybe preordered one back in the first wave 😛

[digital marlin]

TPCast?

[clever sky]

Wireless converter for the Vive

[digital marlin]

oh shit yeah I want one of those

[hard light]

I still don't believe the claim of 2ms latency, I'm pretty certain that isn't motion to photon latency

[clever sky]

@hard light even with all the positive reports from people that have tested it?

i.e. no discernable difference other than the fact that it is indeed wireless.

[hard light]

it's not like there's been much information coming from reputable sources just yet

[cobalt relic]

Their 2ms is the "additional" latency

So it's on top of the regular setup

It's not unbelievable

[mighty carbon]

@clever sky every new outside positional tracking for mobile VR got positive reviews. Then actual dev got a hold of the system, tested it and latency turned out to be shit. Same goes for TPCast. Fanboys will always sugar coat the truth 😃

[clever sky]

We'll see - I'm pretty confident that sometimes new tech comes along and breaks old paradigms. In this case, it's a direct LOS mm-wave (super high frequency) wireless system... which is different to any wireless before it. So we can't really accurately apply old expectations to this.

It's not without its caveats of course.

But, they're pretty suited to the function required here (wireless HMD - generally you will have direct LOS to the broadcast unit, because you need LOS for tracking anyway).

[mighty carbon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__4waa1cwdg

how on earth did they do the warping shield effect without bringing performance down?! o.O (it's not UE4 most likely)

[clever sky]

Looks like an animated texture to me.

flipbook texture wrapped to sphere.

[mighty carbon]

not a post process ?

it looks like it's warping the image outside of cockpit

[graceful junco]

Looks like a refractive material to me.

[mighty carbon]

I see.. Isn't it "expensive' ?

[clever sky]

It really just looks like water ripples to me 😛

[mighty carbon]

aye. Oculus said that all of these full screen effects are taxing (at least in Note 4 days)

aye. Oculus said that all of these full screen effects are taxing (at least in Note 4 days)

having refractive material covering whole screen gotta be taxing, right ?

[wintry escarp]

what warping?

[mighty carbon]

the shield effect

[sturdy coral]

@full junco another approach is to use an ambient cubemap in your post processing settings instead of a skylight, and fade into a different post processing volume with a different ambient cubemap when you go indoors

[wintry escarp]

I saw a water caustic effect but I don't think it actually warped the image

[sturdy coral]

I can see it warping the image a bit. look at the straight lines on the background geometry

[wintry escarp]

when the water caused washes over the cockpit?

caustic

[sturdy coral]

look at 0:26 where you can see straight lines in the background

yeah the caustic looking thing

I'm not sure of all the details, but sometimes it is cheaper to sample scenecolor from distorted UVs in an unlit translucent material than it is to use refraction, and I think works around some sorting issues

see water in kite demo for an example

the river water

[mighty carbon]

well, translucency hits performance in Gear VR too

[sturdy coral]

yeah, I'd have to look, does additive blending on translucency support refraction?

if not you'd have to use something more expensive, and unlit, reading scenecolor, could be much cheaper

for refraction you have to come up with normals, etc., but you could potentially just calculate UV distortion from some sine functions or something cheaper

that's not necessarily what they are doing though, it does seem like any approach would be fairly expensive on mobile and you'd end up having to have overhead for that shield effect to play in all of your scenes

[full junco]

@sturdy coral interesting, that ambient cubemap would also cause shadowed areas to not be 100% dark?

but I like how the skylight has the option that the lower hemisphere is darker, since that makes sense

[wintry escarp]

could they just ripple the vertices of meshes in front of the player?

[full junco]

could I do the same with that ambient cubemap?

[sturdy coral]

@full junco yeah, just paint the bottom black in photoshop

[full junco]

and then I could delete the skylight?

[sturdy coral]

@wintry escarp would break with any world-space textures or world-space pixel shader effects and you'd have to work around it

@full junco yeah, but the cost is similar

[full junco]

well but I hopefully no longer have those stupid reflections, and that saves some performance, right?

[sturdy coral]

@full junco an ambient cubemap is similar, and may go through the same reflection environment

@full junco try this with your existing scene: "Toggle r.NoTiledReflections to use the non-tiled method which is usually slower unless you have very few probes"

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Performance/GPU/index.html

if you only have a few reflection probes (in your case right now only one, the skylight), it is more efficient to have NoTiledReflections turned on

hmm, that option may have changed in 4.14 I don't see it in the console

[full junco]

yeah its not there

but I dont need the skylight, I only needed it for making stuff less than 100% dark

the ambient cubemap has way less features than a skylight so its surely the better way to do it

[sturdy coral]

possibly

[full junco]

I also no longer get the "reflection apply" in profilegpu

with the ambient cubemap

so I guess its exactly what I need, thanks! 😃

[trim python]

Guys

Can I do vr without an htc vive.

I mean can I make it.

[wintry escarp]

for a vive, I doubt it

[dry shell]

https://youtu.be/GsmLqJBNeUE

[digital marlin]

@trim python Technically you can, but you'd still need to test it etc.

I'd say you'd struggle without the proper device.

[trim python]

So could I test it

Without the vive

Like just play it with the two views

[digital marlin]

Ah you can simulate it.

I built a lot of stuff before I integrated VR aspects into my game.

But I was also tyre-kicking too.

[real needle]

TIL: Installing an AMD GPU is a complete mess. Half the day wasted and am now reverting to an old 600 series nvidia

Even the integrated graphics works better damnit

[real needle]

Another person saying their card magically doesnt work. I have upgraded 3 time from nvdia to amd to no issue. R9 Fury X

[full junco]

installing an amd card is same hard or easy as installing a nvidia card

if it doesnt work then its just DOA

but that can happen to all hardware

[clever sky]

Can confirm. Have had problems with both Nvidia and AMD hardware.

[native cedar]

is it possible to start a shipping build in VR mode?

all I have is the build

which has one level

alt+enter does not work

[hard light]

yeah, you can do shipping VR builds

we used blueprint on game start to enable stereo if needed

(we later changed that to be a UI button, so it starts full screen then gives you an option for VR based on what headset was detected as plugged in)

[graceful junco]

@native cedar There is a checkbox in the project settings to enable VR mode on launch.

[native cedar]

Allright thanks guys

[wicked oak]

-vr on the shortcut

thats how you do it for steam

[mighty carbon]

there are ~90M Samsung's Gear VR capable phones in the wild

[wintry escarp]

what happens if you write for an S7 and they use it on an S6 or Note4? Can it reduce the graphics or does it lag and stutter?

[real needle]

hello everybody. Does somebody use Oculus Touch with Widget Interaction Components?

I have an issue

[full junco]

@real needle what's the issue?

[real needle]

I have some 3D widgets and I want to access them. I previously activated them with the centered widget interaction component of my hmd, which works fine. But the widget interaction components I added to the touch controllers do not activate the buttons of the widget which confuses me. They only seem to work if am looking at the widget directly, hence using the widget interaction component of the hmd as well

[full junco]

maybe there can only be 1 widget interaction component at once

[mighty carbon]

@wintry escarp get S6 and make sure it runs on S6 well 😃

Note 4 must die already

S6 + S7 = ~90M units. I didn't even bother to look how many Note 4 are out there

[plain badger]

What's the best plugin/template(hands etc) for VR now? The Blueprint template or Runebergs plugin?

For Vive and PC if that matters

[full junco]

I use none and that works quite well. don't really understand why some people want templates or plug-ins or whatever

that's a dependency on logic you don't fully know because you didn't write it yourself, and it's unnecessary to create that dependency

[plain badger]

So you made your own animations/teleportation and stuff?

[wicked oak]

i use none

every vr game i make (at 5 right now) i improve upon what i had last time

DWVR is at version 3, VRMultigames is version 2

[full junco]

I don't use any animations, and teleportation I created myself of course.

[real needle]

@full junco really only one widget interaction component at once? For every actor, level, player, project? 😮

[full junco]

that's super simple

@real needle well just a guess, I don't know...

[wicked oak]

teleporting is so imple

simple

[plain badger]

Alright, C++ or blueprint?

[wicked oak]

animations i have my own

[plain badger]

Alright, C++ or blueprint?

[full junco]

ue4 offers everything related to vr

I do my input logic all in BP

[real needle]

@full junco I stopped the hit testing for one widget interaction and the widget interaction for my touch works... that's kinda odd xD

[wicked oak]

both

[plain badger]

Well, it may be simple but it's a lot to take in all at once. 😃

[real needle]

I didn't think of that... interessting

[plain badger]

I haven't done any gamedev before VR but live and learn I guess.

[full junco]

if you haven't done any gamedev before you should first learn ue4 with some non vr project

vr stuff is way harder to debug and test because you have to put on that headset all the time

quite annoying

[plain badger]

Well, I've done similar things(simulation engine) minus the graphics

[real needle]

@full junco In a non-vr game I wouldn't have an idea for that currently. But now I'm working in a project with oculus (touch) so I have to use it 😄

Working with UE4 for about the last 6 months. I got used to the annoying headset 😄

[full junco]

well I'm also working on a VR project for something like 9 or 10 months now, but there are times when I don't touch the VR stuff for weeks.

and even when I work on stuff that the player will do in the end, so directly related to VR, I still test it with some debug logic on the regular monitor until its all perfectly working and only then test in VR

[plain badger]

Yeah, I was thinking about having a regular "WASD" pawn most of the time and then replace it with a VR Pawn only when it's really needed.

[real needle]

@full junco yeah, I also have my non-VR dummy and mouse controls for that ^^ I don't want to use the headset "all" the time, but if your problem is related to vr you have no choice i guess xD (like setting up touch controls etc)

[full junco]

yeah

those 100% VR related stuff is usually super easy though and quickly implemented

ue4 makes it super easy

[real needle]

the non-vr-dummy is way faster, would recommend that for most debugging

@full junco sometimes you are just on the wrong track xD I thought that the touch controls somehow fucks it up, because I expected that UE4 can handle more than one widget interaction hit-testing at a time ^^

[full junco]

it was quite clear to me that it isnt related to oculus touch. I never used a touch, I only have a vive

[real needle]

Buuuuut there is a great UE4 community who can correct your point of view 😄 so thank you very much for that bit of information

[full junco]

for ue4 its basically the same if you attach a component to one or the other

[mighty carbon]

http://www.glixel.com/interviews/epics-tim-sweeney-on-vr-and-the-future-of-civilization-w459561 what has Tim been smoking for the past several years ?! Robo Recall wouldn't happen (and VR advancements in UE4) is one giant corporation wouldn't fund all that

UE4 is not even open. Epic can pull the plug at any time and it will be over (not likely to happen, but it can happen)

[wintry escarp]

does he talk about civilisation devolving into a mad max style dystopia?

[mighty carbon]

read it

[full junco]

@mighty carbon no, epic can't

you can always continue to use whatever ue4 version you have

[mighty carbon]

no, they can

it's not open source license agreement

[wintry escarp]

I don't think vr will do that much, AR will have many more useful uses

[mighty carbon]

it's governed by standard EULA

[full junco]

@mighty carbon the EULA allows you to use that version that you have forever

[mighty carbon]

@wintry escarp VR will always be a primary tech for entertainment

@full junco If Epic will tell you can't use it, you can't use it. If it was MIT or GPL, they wouldn't be able to tell you what to do

(or any of those kind of licenses)

[full junco]

@mighty carbon you can use it forever. end of discussion.

[mighty carbon]

you can't

read damn license

Epic can change the terms of their own license

what rock do you live under?!

[full junco]

epic can cahneg the terms, but only for new engine versions

[mighty carbon]

you are nuts

it's not an open source license

[full junco]

no dev would ever use an engine if the engine developer could just change terms

[mighty carbon]

they can simply change whatever they want. If they will tell you can't use it, you can't use it.

Well, if they do that, of course no indie dev will use it after that

but they have to do that, they can

obviously it would be a very bad business move

but the point here is that they have full control over the engine, yet he blames corporations (Epic is one too btw) for having control over VR platforms (basically)

[full junco]

when he talks about platforms he doesnt mean engines

[mighty carbon]

simple fact that Steam went free-for-all and became a black hole doesn't bother Tim

[full junco]

and epic isnt giant, epic is quite small

[mighty carbon]

Epic is funded by giant Tencent

[frozen sapphire]

interesting vr conversation today 😉

[full junco]

they have less than 50%

[frozen sapphire]

https://www.unrealengine.com/eula

just to settle it up, maybe everybody read that on a random channel?

[full junco]

yeah @mighty carbon stop this off topic discussion 😛

[frozen sapphire]

D.    Effect of Termination. Upon any termination, the Epic Licenses will automatically terminate, you may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to you by the Epic Licenses, and you must destroy all copies of the Licensed Technology in your possession and cease distributing any Products developed under this Agreement. Within 30 days of termination, unless otherwise agreed by Epic, you must destroy all Products in your inventory. 

[real needle]

"giant" or not. they seem to have about 250 employees and are part of the khronos group. "big enough" for me xD

[frozen sapphire]

TL;DR don't violate the terms, and don't try and sue them claiming a patent infringement

[full junco]

yeah the eula is clear that it can only be terminated if you break stuff of the eula

[wicked oak]

turns out unity has the same thing

and cryengine

gotta go use Godot or Blender guys

[mighty carbon]

the point being that leaving VR platform "open" (as it would evolve itself and anyone can do whatever they want there) is absurd - it needs a ton of money to evolve into something ubiquitous.

[full junco]

you can be open and still make a ton of money, thats what steam does I would say

[mighty carbon]

@full junco sorry to break you illusion, but "termination" can mean anything

[frozen sapphire]

and Tim's openess comment I understood to only mean, "Let vive users into the Oculus store too"

which sounds nice to me 😃 There is some neat content that I can't play yet

[full junco]

@frozen sapphire theres that software that lets you play the stuff from the oculus store

[mighty carbon]

@wicked oak all I am saying is a guy with the same power as any other corporation complains about it. In every damn interview.

[full junco]

he has by far not the same power as a mark zuckerberg

why is so much of what you say not making any sense? 😛

[mighty carbon]

eeh, you are smoking same pipe as Tim @full junco

[cobalt relic]

Epic can definitely suddenly stop allowing people to ship UE4 games, or change the terms

[full junco]

@mighty carbon and I dont know what you're smoking but it definitely isnt good for you

[mighty carbon]

when you release on Steam, and see how it goes, you will most likely say that openness of Steam sucks

[frozen sapphire]

is a huge fan of big open terrible store fronts

because normally the good stuff gets reviewed and marketed

[mighty carbon]

good for you. most indies don't make any money on Steam any longer.

[frozen sapphire]

however, every store doesn't have to be that!

I mean, there is Itch right?

[mighty carbon]

who makes money via Itch?!>?@>@

[frozen sapphire]

who said anything about making money?

[mighty carbon]

and I don't mean pocket change. I mean income for living.

[full junco]

couldnt you have posted that thing in #lounge?

couldnt you have posted that thing in #lounge?

I like how on topic #vr usually is

[cobalt relic]

As an indie I would really appreciate Steam to filter out games, even if it meant my own game wouldn't have a 100% chance of being accepted there. The AppStore model hurts developers a lot, and it doesn't really benefit consumers either

[full junco]

I like how on topic #vr usually is

[cobalt relic]

As an indie I would really appreciate Steam to filter out games, even if it meant my own game wouldn't have a 100% chance of being accepted there. The AppStore model hurts developers a lot, and it doesn't really benefit consumers either

[full junco]

couldnt you have posted that thing in #lounge?

[mighty carbon]

well, I am in it for money, besides fun (those times when I made mods for games for fun are long gone)

[full junco]

@cobalt relic the problem is there are so many games that it would be really expensive for steam to manually filter bad ones out

[mighty carbon]

well, the article was for VR

and this channel is dead anyway, so... doesn't hurt to talk about related stuff

[cobalt relic]

@full junco They already do filter manually.

[full junco]

@mighty carbon it isn't dead... theres usually always on topic dicsussion here

@cobalt relic they do? how?

[cobalt relic]

Some games go through Greenlight through fraud

Then they mysteriously don't

Some games disparage Gabe and get to the first place

Only never to ship

[full junco]

well vr doesnt go through greenlight anyways, right? or did they change that now?

[cobalt relic]

If they can filter for all games, they can probably filter VR games too

It's not like the volume is nonsensical

Greenlight could pre-select 30 games a week like they do now

You only need one person to filter that volume manually

I wish they did that instead of allowing anyone onto the store

[full junco]

I dont really think much about it, I know I can't change it

I just have to use whatever system there is

[cobalt relic]

Sure

[full junco]

and the fact that steam exists is awesome

[cobalt relic]

But it's the top reason I have for also going to GOG with my game

I want to support the other approach

[full junco]

are there really people using gog? I mean, apart from those that just dont like DRM.

[cobalt relic]

Probably 5% of Steam users, or less

But you'd get much more visibility on that store than on Steam

And on the long term, I think all devs benefit from an editorialized approach to game publishing. I'd rather have 10 small stores that accept 10% of games, than one big monopolistic store that ships everything.

[mighty carbon]

in the next few years solo indies will most likely extinct on Steam.

market already seeing consolidation of indies and indies going back to publishers.

[cobalt relic]

I don't think indies will go extinct, I think they will just be 5000 "indies" to ship every month, like on the AppStore.

[mighty carbon]

game dev industry has been going in cycles. This is one of those cycles when solo indies don't fly anymore. 2008 or so was a peak of solo indie careers.

[frozen sapphire]

I think markets have to expand and contract as well

[full junco]

and when was it before 2008? was there ever a time before where indies could ship games?

[mighty carbon]

I mean, there is always a chance to become next minecraft, so let's face the facts - the times when solo indie could release a small game on steam and make a living out of it are gone

[frozen sapphire]

there have always been indie studios of some size or another

[cobalt relic]

Solo indies are not going to stop doing games just because they can't sell copies. I know I'm not in this for money

[frozen sapphire]

the big publishers congealed out of the "pc revolution"

[full junco]

yeah there will always be indie games because most indies dont need to live from what they do

[cobalt relic]

Exactly

[mighty carbon]

Steam is a shithole now because of indies who don't care for market well-being and for Valve who is desperate for cash (1M indies release $3 games is a lot of money for Valve, while pennies for devs)

[frozen sapphire]

meh, steam is great still

[full junco]

@mighty carbon with "indies who don't care for market well-being" you mean people who dont care about making money? thats not something bad

[cobalt relic]

Steam is great for users, it's shit for developers.

[frozen sapphire]

I mean, it's not like I have to sit and stare at shitty games all the time there

it's not youtube

where I have to watch a commercial before starting my games

[mighty carbon]

I truly wish they would go back to old school model - review a handful of games manually and let them to the storefront, while indies who don't care for money could release on Itch 😛

[cobalt relic]

^ this

That's what GOG does

[frozen sapphire]

yeah, that'd work fine too but ideally there'd be an itch hook into steam then

heheh

[mighty carbon]

Getting on GoG is tough :/

[cobalt relic]

I'm trying to be on GOG, first build wasn't good enough, we'll resubmit in a month or so

That's good

imho

[full junco]

if you want selection you can always try to ship on consoles

[mighty carbon]

That's why I am pro-Oculus and not pro-Vive - there is still a good change to make it big with Oculus where with Vive - not so much.

[cobalt relic]

I definitely want to do that, @full junco 😃 Maybe the next game

[mighty carbon]

consoles are a way too expensive

[full junco]

expensive?

[mighty carbon]

PS4 at least

dev kits aren't free

[frozen sapphire]

that's part of the arrangement though

it's not open

it's not free as in beer

and it's very selective

[mighty carbon]

ESRB (and PEGI and whatever else depending on region) certification costs an arm and a leg

true

[frozen sapphire]

on the other end you have itch

it's a spectrum

[full junco]

well spending some money is fine if you later get more back 😄

[mighty carbon]

so, if Steam was what it used to be, it would go like this - release on Steam (if you can), make a ton of cash, invest into consoles, make more cash, rinse-repeat (assuming games are still being good)

[full junco]

don't care so much about cash, just make a great game

[mighty carbon]

there is no spectrum on PC - it's all shit now

[full junco]

a really great game will be found and played

[mighty carbon]

great game in your mind might not be a great game commercially

people vote with dollars. If you want to play in a sandbox, go play on Itch and don't trash commercial store fronts

[full junco]

@mighty carbon do you know that everything you say is negative stuff? dont know when you actually talked about something good the last time... you only complain about how stupid everything is, how buggy ue4 is and whatever else stuff

try to be a bit more positive, thats good for your health too I think 😄

[mighty carbon]

cuz I don't wear pink shades like you do 😃

[frozen sapphire]

I mean, if voting with dollars was the end all then we'd only have f2p casinos like on mobile

[mighty carbon]

and I am not going to just sit there and pretend UE4 has no bugs. I report them.

@frozen sapphire if you don't have bills to pay, maybe it's not the end of it all 😃

[frozen sapphire]

if you're trying to get rich in games then that's pretty bleak at any time in gaming history honestly

compared to investment banking

etc

[mighty carbon]

I am not trying to get rich with games per se, but I am trying to get back in the game and do it for living (I did it once and it was awesome).

[frozen sapphire]

lighting will strike for some folks, but I don't think it matters that there are a flood of content in stores

[cobalt relic]

Great indies games do succeed commercially. See Factorio, or Darkest Dungeon if you want a recent example

[full junco]

yeah

[mighty carbon]

lol, might as well bring up MineCraft 😃

[frozen sapphire]

might as well bring up that he did that while working at a day job for fun

[cobalt relic]

I did not bring up Minecraft

[full junco]

and that did succeed even without steam

[frozen sapphire]

never tried to make a billion dollars off of it

[cobalt relic]

Nor will I

[mighty carbon]

I do wish you well folks, but it sounds like someone didn't do whole a lot of reseach about why some succeed with ease and vast majority doesn't

[frozen sapphire]

lol ok

[full junco]

those that succeed just have great games

[cobalt relic]

Because great game + luck

[frozen sapphire]

or large marketing budgets

as is eveidenced by mobile games

evidenced*

[full junco]

I dont know about mobile

[wintry escarp]

anyone good on tech knowledge? is 5ghz wifi as fast as usb2 or 3?

[frozen sapphire]

smilertoo, I don't think so?

[mighty carbon]

there are sooo many factors for success. Just having a great game isn't enough. Luck, right timing, right genre, connections in the industry, etc. etc.

[cobalt relic]

Obviously not everyone succeeds, and it's unfair. That's because there is way more offer than there is demand. I like space games, there are maybe 200 space games on Steam right now. I could never play all of those.

[mighty carbon]

I don't care about fair. Life isn't fair.

[full junco]

@wintry escarp 5ghz WiFi should at least do something like 500 MBits, which is USB 2 speed roughly

[wintry escarp]

ok, ill stick with usb...I got that ue4 remote plugin

[mighty carbon]

just saying that Oculus bets Steam for indie VR devs now and having another open VR storefront would be a bad bad idea

[cobalt relic]

Basically, if you want to get well paid for your development endeavour, gaming is not the right field, no one is denying that

Or any artistic field, really

[mighty carbon]

but you could get paid well

in 2008-2011 it was a great market

not too many games, sort of right of passage process on Steam, no greenlight shit

[cobalt relic]

You could get paid for singing, if you happen to be that one in 2500000 that stumbles on a producer at a restaurant in Hollywood

2008-2011 was an accident, it's not coming back

People need to make their peace with that

It's not even about Steam

[mighty carbon]

I guess I am not the only one "negative" person here 😉

[full junco]

@motorsep there were no good engines people could use. no ue4 I mean. now there are way more games because the engines became way more accessible

so you can blame Tim Sweeney again, that's surely something you like

[cobalt relic]

I'm not being negative, really. There has never been so many games, so many tools for games, so many creative people

It's great

[frozen sapphire]

yeah, I'm pretty happy about the whole situation

[cobalt relic]

I'm just saying commercially, it's a blood bath, just like film, or painting, or music

[frozen sapphire]

but I have a day job 😛 so I'm not desparate to make it work

[cobalt relic]

People can choose to be in the blood bath, consider alternatives, or forget about money

[frozen sapphire]

after years of film work, I had enough of the blood and tears watching anonymous producer types make all the money

[cobalt relic]

Alternatives today would be consoles imho

[mighty carbon]

@full junco where did I blame Tim and what for? All I said it was hypocritical of him to bash walled garden markets from his position. I expect that from Stallman, but not from a guy who made fortune through walled garden, who still gets money from walled garden and yet he complains about it, when clearly walled garden brings health to the market.

[frozen sapphire]

people choose to do that (like me) for passion, but it's hard as hell and none of the money will ever come back to you

at least with VR or games you have an option for the distribution (film now too I guess)

music as well

[mighty carbon]

and btw, I find UE4 to be a great engine, considering the alternatives.

[cobalt relic]

I do agree that Tim is full of shit

Especially when Epic is doing their own closed market

[frozen sapphire]

I agree with Tims sentiments, however it is odd that he personally is saying those things

mental disconnect all over my brain

[full junco]

Tim is awesome

[frozen sapphire]

so cool that he rallies forth the cause of freedom and love because those are cool things

hopefully one day also commercially viable things

lol

[cobalt relic]

When you have the Epic launcher, one that only ships on Windows, as the exclusive frontend to download Marketplace assets, you can't really talk about walled gardens

[frozen sapphire]

speaking a baseball fan, I'd be able to get behind a league system of publishing at least as metaphor

hobby/community baseball, A, AA, A short season, AAA, and the majors

😉

[full junco]

@cobalt relic that's just because epics resources are limited

haven't yet read any complaints about that too

[cobalt relic]

Uh, see the Linux threads

[full junco]

I don't read those

[cobalt relic]

You can't download assets without Windows

As in "can't possibly do it"

[mighty carbon]

@frozen sapphire that's good that you do it for fun. I am saying that too many games for fun create a lot of problems for games that were made for fun with profiting in mind. That's why it's critical to make sure games that are made as business don't get trumped by games that aren't. Thus Steam needs a section for games that get manually approved and promoted, and a black hole section where everyone else, including back catalog games, is.

[cobalt relic]

You'd think a download link on the marketplace website could happen

[frozen sapphire]

that's when I'd approach the seller directly and offer cash directly

[full junco]

@cobalt relic is it different for unity?

[cobalt relic]

@full junco I believe it is ? Unity provides a binary package, UE4 doesn't.

[storm vortex]

I don't understand why you cannot just DL from marketplace directly. If they are trying to prevent piracy, it's not like someone couldn't just buy the asset and zip the results and share the data the same way... Not to mention selling a game with pirated assets seems like a really bad idea..

[full junco]

for unity you even have to install unity to access store stuff

that's even more annoying

[cobalt relic]

And Unity isn't the company trumpeting against Windows Store, UWP, Oculus Store, and so on. Epic is that company.

[wintry escarp]

gearvr support vulkan?

[cobalt relic]

Same as UE4 then

[mighty carbon]

@full junco Epic resources are only "limited" because Epic works on supporting AAA devs and has bunch of projects internally. So yeah, resources to be dedicated to something that doesn't bring a lot of cash are limited indeed. I bet if you pay for support (they do offer that option), suddenly you will have a lot of resources opened to you.

[full junco]

@cobalt relic it's not epic as a company, it's Tim Sweeney as a person

[mighty carbon]

@wintry escarp no, not yet

[full junco]

epic as a company needs to be profitable of course

so Tim can't just do whatever his dream would be

[frozen sapphire]

@mighty carbon for fun or not, you either want a free market or you don't. If you didn't have one, you'd probably complain about the gatekeepers only allowing a homogenous kind of game into the market. Or the gatekeepers allowing bias for some kinds of cultural experience vs any other.

[cobalt relic]

Epic as a company has a long history of being hostile to indies, small developers, etc. Colleagues have horror stories about them. Today, they are still not supporting Linux users, they have their own closed shop. That's okay... But they can't be saying, via the CEO / founder, that Oculus Store is bad

[frozen sapphire]

I think for me, Steam is great as a consumer and so on. Oculus not so much. But oculus is making their store exclusive and unique and that's a good business decision since it's trying to drum the platform up.

[full junco]

I hope oculus store will disappear again

[frozen sapphire]

I just don't like Facebook perrsonally. I backed Oculus during the kickstarter, but wow that was a bombshell for me

but who are the alternatives?

[full junco]

yeah, Facebook is just evil

[storm vortex]

I think the Oculus store is good competition for Steam, but I wish they wouldn't do exclusives or at least open their store to other HMDs

[frozen sapphire]

I mean that honestly

[full junco]

gabe Newell is way better than Mark Zuckerberg

[frozen sapphire]

Google? Microsoft? ...

[cobalt relic]

Gabe is also acting out of pure self-interest, to be real here.

[frozen sapphire]

I have no idea who would have the billions to bootstrap consumer VR just for the hell of it

[mighty carbon]

@frozen sapphire I started out with Steam when I had to go through a process. It took forever, but my game passed. So, I understand how it works, and if my games don't pass, then I am a shit game developer and I would just have to think of something else. I am willing to accept that.

[full junco]

@cobalt relic but gabes interests somehow aligned with those of basically all gamers usually

[frozen sapphire]

@mighty carbon my point was that now your ability to market games is what matters O.o

[mighty carbon]

do you know how much it cost to market your product ?

[frozen sapphire]

yes I do

I work for a company that relies heavily on this

[mighty carbon]

I don't have that kind of money just laying around

[full junco]

it also costs much to make the product itself

[frozen sapphire]

it's astronomical compared to the cost of development

and that's the real problem

[mighty carbon]

and the times when onlines reviews made different are gone now

[cobalt relic]

@full junco Interests align, but Valve is definitely getting the lion's share, and they have been sitting on their success for a few years.

[frozen sapphire]

not indies flooding markets

[mighty carbon]

when I released my game I could already feel that just online review alone is not enough.

[frozen sapphire]

it's the whales who spend 9 mil on a 1 mil game just to own all ad spaces

[cobalt relic]

@frozen sapphire Marketing cost is proportional to the competition

[frozen sapphire]

@cobalt relic excellent point

[mighty carbon]

market is Steam

PC market

and what floods it is indies

not AAA companies

[frozen sapphire]

not if you can afford to advertise !

all the time

constnatly

constantly*

[mighty carbon]

AAA has been there and they are in the same privileged position. They release only a handful of games per year, like they always did, and those don't flood Steam

[frozen sapphire]

and they advertise constantly, preview, court the press to get eyeballs years out of a release

[full junco]

@frozen sapphire I don't understand why ads work to be honest. I would never buy something just because I saw an ad.

[cobalt relic]

AAA are not the issue, they're in a different category. I think the issue is commercial indies vs amateurs, and where should Steam draw the line

[mighty carbon]

AA and AAA can afford to advertise constantly. Plus they can see outside of Steam anyway. Indies can't and they rely on Steam creating a disaster.

[cobalt relic]

I think Steam should have a quality threshold, and obviously I think that threshold should be "my game's quality"

[full junco]

haha

[cobalt relic]

Being real here

[frozen sapphire]

I'd be very happy to find an audience that was financially supportive at all. Get a few good years in there

then find a mothership to work at

😉

[cobalt relic]

But anyway, games are like movies now

Anyone can do one

Everyone wants to do one

It just so happens that your wedding movie won't be played in cinemas

(I'm sure that can be arranged for a price, but you get the idea)

[full junco]

can we get back to vr now?

[frozen sapphire]

yes! so today I realized that if I'm not careful I'm going to just have these like, default white-guy hands for this thing I'm working on

but not everybody looks like me of course

so I started wondering how to have a static mesh selector or something

or whether it's best to just only make things that are "tools" etc

to avoid that collision and possibly ruin the immersion

secondly, I'm pretty new to ue4... is UMG the right approach for little HUDs on the motion controllers in your app?

[storm vortex]

@frozen sapphire my eventual plan is to have human hands, but optionally display an outline of the controller for people that want to make sure they don't collide them. I don't collide them myself cause I'm used to the game, but people I have test collide quite often cause they aren't used to it.

[full junco]

there's not really an alternative to umg

[clever sky]

Make quality porno games catering to furries if you want a financially supportive customer base.

[frozen sapphire]

so furry hands

got it

[mighty carbon]

lol, but it's true

I wish Oculus would have AO section in their store 😛

[storm vortex]

That's the real untapped storefront for VR ^

[frozen sapphire]

@storm vortex the collision in mind there was just that "these are not my hands!!" and no the physical collision

however, now I'm thinking about that!

[mighty carbon]

although pr0n game would require mocap :/

[clever sky]

Side note... Has anyone experienced bugs with custom channel?

[frozen sapphire]

because it's also hella weird when that happens

[clever sky]

Been trying to add a custom blocking object channel tonight

and it works once I've made it... then stops working once I quit and reload the editor.

[storm vortex]

Hands are neat but if they aren't done well I rather just have them disappear when holding an object. That's what I'm currently doing since I don't think I'll get hands to the point where I'm happy with them. That's a low priority for me though.

[clever sky]

Building it out also causes it to fail.

[frozen sapphire]

something else I'd like, is a chaperone bound for my ceiling

is that information I can recieve from the api in engine?

[clever sky]

You people and your low ceilings. /3.3m ceiling master race

[frozen sapphire]

some of us work in basements lest our children wreck the studio

[clever sky]

😛

[frozen sapphire]

and holy christ 3.3m

[clever sky]

😄 it's an old house.

[frozen sapphire]

must be fun hanging lights lol

[clever sky]

They're all on pendants.

😛 I guess that's why the people that originally built the house must've gone for pendant fittings.

[mighty carbon]

https://www.reddit.com/r/GearVR/comments/5myjpr/gear_vr_motion_controls_comparison_at_ces_2017/

[wintry escarp]

what do you think is more important? the better tracking or vr touch controls?

[frozen sapphire]

@full junco an alternative to UMG would to be something where I just create a gnarly contraption with static meshes and whatnot I guess

just saying that makes me dread debugging any performance problems I'd cause myself

[mighty carbon]

@wintry escarp Well, people don't like to buy accessories. Getting a basic bluetooth gamepad seems to be a big deal for Gear VR users. So, if Samsung releases next Gear VR with positional tracking, it would be great. If they release it with motions controls, it would be great. XImmerse and Nolo VR come with both. I'd get them for non-gaming applications. I wouldn't make a game requiring those.

@frozen sapphire since it's VR, you are gonna have to go with 3D widgets

or render UMG into stereo layers

[frozen sapphire]

@mighty carbon when you say 3D widgets your talking about the UMG Widget right?

because that's what I was referring to vs making some snowflake of a custom arrangment of actors representing HUD functions

[full junco]

umg performance is very good

btw, is this still accurate? https://forums.unrealengine.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=87367&d=1460020388

I mean, its just confusing 😄

I always think the numbers are the face buttons...

so I wondered why face button 1 isnt responding to me hitting the menu button 😛

[opal bobcat]

uses umg in his vr project

[full junco]

umg is great for VR

[frozen sapphire]

ok, I'll spend more time with it then of course

[opal bobcat]

i use it in c++ and construct dialogs at runtime

[frozen sapphire]

I'm trying to use mostly C++ (for personal development reasons and not because I dislike blueprints)

[opal bobcat]

same

[frozen sapphire]

and that was my next question @opal bobcat

[full junco]

dont do umg with c++

[opal bobcat]

im like 99% c++

[full junco]

umg is visual stuff so BPs fits best there

[frozen sapphire]

because most docs are focused on blueprints to some degree

[opal bobcat]

well i make the basic dialog using the editor visual tools

then i fill in parts of it with various elements from c++

so its kind of a blend

but theres no logic in bp

its basicaly just templating im doing w/the editor

photex: yes, i've gotten to the point where i can convert bps wholesale to c++ manually

thats how ive adapted some bp tutorials for various things into c++

reverse engineering all the api calls

which you can do because of the option in bp

[frozen sapphire]

awesome

[opal bobcat]

i'd say the coolest part about bp is it enables java style interfaces in c++

i dunno if thats just part of the engine or specific to bp

[frozen sapphire]

hard to tell with all that code generation going on

😃

unreal is like it's own flavor of C++

[opal bobcat]

basically

they dont use STDlib at all

so they've basically had to replicate most of it with the kismet libraries

which i must admit they've done an admirable job of

i dont really have any complaints about kismet

[frozen sapphire]

I thought Kismet was the UDK version of Blueprints

is it still around in ue4?

[opal bobcat]

i dunno i just notice like half of the api calls im making go to various kismet headers

kismetsystem

kismetmath

[frozen sapphire]

"legacy" hah

[opal bobcat]

well its not legacy for 4.14

[frozen sapphire]

the only reason I don't miss stdlib is because their offerings seem complete enough

[opal bobcat]

and lots of those calls seem to use slate

[frozen sapphire]

the only reason I don't miss stdlib is because their offerings seem complete enough

[opal bobcat]

and lots of those calls seem to use slate

when i drill down to their implementations

yeah they even have map replacements

they have a whole string library in fstring

i can even do pairing witih tpair

[frozen sapphire]

before the Spine guys started their official importer, I started adding a plugin to import spine animations

was pretty happy with the json support and all the standard containers

[opal bobcat]

yeah

[frozen sapphire]

really didn't feel the need to reach out but I'm sure at some point you hit that wall

really didn't feel the need to reach out but I'm sure at some point you hit that wall

really didn't feel the need to reach out but I'm sure at some point you hit that wall

[opal bobcat]

well ive used winapi calls

to get filesystem stuff

but besides that nothign else so far

i might want to try and image library

so i could open more types of image files

i was also considering making some sort of procedurally generated texture tiling system that could enable me to open image files that excede the maximum texture resolution

[full junco]

not sure if I'm stupid, but only stuff that has physics collision enabled can affect meshes that are simulating physics, right? so a mesh that only has query collision enabled doesnt affect such a physics simulating mesh, it would just overlap

for some reason when I teleport all physics simulating meshes on the ground where I teleported to are flying away