every StaticMeshComponent is 1
#virtual-reality
wicked oak
so if you have 10 of the same SMC it wont instance them
would be a cool feature, but dunno if its worth it
i want to be able to put a update soon that claims a huge performance improvement
also becouse its heavily needed
wicked oak
alright, Forward Instanced is 12k api calls
vs 20k api calls of Non-instanced
as expected
it still is way too slow
gonna try deferred, but forbidding it from doing a depth prepass
from 26 ms to 20 ms by enabling Instancing on my example
this is the view im using for benchmarking
see all those arcs and small pieces?
those are all individual meshes
and its in fact from Infinity Blade
raven halo
have you tried using blueprints batching capabilities?
specifically: Hierarchical Instanced Static Mesh
wicked oak
btw, hierarchical instanced mesh doesnt work well on VR
wich means that if i use it all shit breaks
raven halo
hah
wicked oak
whats your ps4 game?
raven halo
Rime
wicked oak
wait, you from Madrid?
raven halo
yeah! 😃
wicked oak
Turns out i almost end up working in Rime
raven halo
I think everyone has at this point XD
wicked oak
they were looking for a ue4 programmer
but paid too little
so it wasnt worth it for me
raven halo
yep, usually happens. It wasn't the case for me thankfully. I'm technical artist, though.
wicked oak
in case you are around madrid, ill go tomorrow to "El Zerouno" meetup
wicked oak
a indie developer meetup in madrid
wicked oak
anyway, i didnt accept the job, becouse they wanted to pay 1200 euros for fulltime
raven halo
holy shit
raven halo
that is extremely low
wicked oak
probably tried to undersell me becouse im 21 year old
wicked oak
too bad, they needed a VR guy
raven halo
but I've seen that happen
wicked oak
who knew ue4
wicked oak
was it rime for the vr project?
raven halo
no, it's a different project from Rime entirely
wicked oak
thought it was for Rime
raven halo
I developed some of this stuff with the ue4 programmer of the VR project
by the way, tell me more about the indie meet up
I might join if I ever stop working and find some time
wicked oak
raven halo
awesome, thanks!
wicked oak
moar data from the tests
deferred-instanced with NO zdepth is 9-10k API calls and 16 ms
last one to try is deffered noninstanced
raven halo
that's the best one so far, isn't it?
raven halo
in what sense?
raven halo
ah gotcha
raven halo
to work on my own company 😄
raven halo
we have a VR project in the works and just going around and pitching it to publishers
just finished a Oculus Touch integration and so we just sent the build over to Oculus
wicked oak
cool
raven halo
uploading it to the oculus store and all that for them to see
wicked oak
im trying to finish DWVR, and next project find publishing
my problem is that i dont really have artists
so its really fucking hard to do nearly everything by yourself
raven halo
our contacts there seem to be on vacation though or on paternity leave. So it will probably a while until we hear back from them. They were kind enough to send free kits our way though. which has been awesome
Right, yeah
wicked oak
if you have a team, much better. I could go truly serious with an office and stuff if i had an artist or 2. But given that i dont, i need to get money (from dwvr for example) to hire artists directly
raven halo
one of the good things is that we are 4 in our company, 1 prorammer, 1 designer, 1 artist and me, I kind of do everything
raven halo
yeah exactly
wicked oak
yeah, balanced team
raven halo
so it's really nice to have pretty much everything covered
our main "problem" right now is to find funding
wicked oak
where did you meet with your coworkers?
raven halo
which is turning out to be not that simple
wicked oak
you knew them from before?
raven halo
I've known them for years!
yeah
we have done some awesome VR stuff and I can't wait to show it to people
we are now working on a much, much smaller GearVR project
while we shop the project around looking for funding
the gearVR stuff would be something small we could do pretty quickly
raven halo
and we wouldn't need any funding for that
yeah, so I've heard
I'm now trying to get in touch with Google somehow
I have no clue how to get my hands on a Google Daydream
they don't sell them in Spain yet
so getting a kit from them would be awesome
if anyone has any pointers by the way, please let me know!
I'll buy you a beer
or a few
wicked oak
right now im trying to optimize DWVR as much as i can for PSVR + PC VR
plus put notes of the ideas i have to improve its gameplay
its too shallow
raven halo
oh man, if you have any tips for PSVR let me know, I just filled out the NDA today for the partner program
raven halo
I've seen your game, but I gotta buy it
raven halo
but what about performance?
wicked oak
the PS4 CPU is dogshit
raven halo
hah
wicked oak
ue4 Tick is single thread
wich means it runs on one of the 8 cores the ps4 has
and each of those cores, by itself
is trash
raven halo
jeez...
wicked oak
so, you better avoid Tick on EVERYTHING
oh, and overlaps
physics overlaps murder performance on psvr
on moving objects
dusk vigil
Interesting to hear, I was kinda hoping I would have a lot of stuff 'alive' and doing little juicy things
wicked oak
GPU performance is better than expected
raven halo
oh shit
wicked oak
DWVR runs similar on PC and on PSVR
raven halo
our game features quite a bit of physics
raven halo
oh thank god
wicked oak
its the Overlaps wich give issues, as they are calculated when you move stuff
animation is also multithreaded
if you do it right
dont calculate a thing on the animation tree
just do variables, and then access them. Gotta keep the little "lighning" icon
if that is on, it means it will multithread the animation and run "fast path"
dusk vigil
A short gamasutra article would be nice : ) wink wink
wicked oak
PSMove is not as bad as i was expecting, but tracking area is tiny
raven halo
yeah man
wicked oak
very tiny
raven halo
a gamasutra article with a few tips and tricks would be great, or just general impressions
wicked oak
so forward facing, and forget about grabbing stuff from the floor
raven halo
I'm having the same trouble with touch controllers actually
because the sensors are put on the table, it occludes the view
wicked oak
not sure if i can do a in-depth article on how to truly do multiplatform vr without Sony getting annoyed
i cant go trashtalking the ps4 cpu around
wicked oak
a chat like this is "unnoficial"
actually doing a written article in a serious site....
dusk vigil
Sony NDA makes it hard to say much in public i imagine
wicked oak
i cant put a picture of the dev tools for example
or the devkit
or about stuff on the documentation
raven halo
yeah supposedly, but I've seen a LOT of the floating around twitter
wicked oak
tools are great tho
raven halo
including PSVR dev kits back then
raven halo
Razor?
wicked oak
Razor CPU
raven halo
it's nice!
raven halo
have you tried forward renderer with PSVR?
raven halo
have you decided what to do about the renderer?
wicked oak
ue4 rendering seems to be multithreading
raven halo
are you going forward + MSAA?
raven halo
yeah, same
raven halo
how is that even possible
wicked oak
i guess its due to the lower overhead API
my game is heavily drawcall bound
i have LOTS of objects
raven halo
ahhh I see
wicked oak
with a bunch of polys
raven halo
I'm more pixel shader bound, for sure.
wicked oak
but no dynamic lights
at all
or at most 1 or 2
all the light is 100% baked
as Stationary
raven halo
yeah, I got a bunch of those
raven halo
and stationary directional light with cascades
wicked oak
stationary is shadows baked, and gi baked, but then the dynamic shadows and actual liight on the object is dynamic
raven halo
yep
wicked oak
you cant spam them
as my designer was doing
static lights have 0 runtime cost
literally 0
so you can spam them all you want
raven halo
I've actually tried using a few spotlights/pointlights with shadow casting and it murders the GPU
and by a few I mean like... 2 spotlights
that were not even overlapping
and were maybe casting 10 shadows
wicked oak
i have to try forward render on ps4
the lower drawcall cost might make it usable
im CPU bound due to Tick anyway
CPU bound on ps4, GPU bound on pc...
on PC im Drawcall bound
raven halo
so the reason why it's running faster on PS4 you might simply be due to draw optimization, which seems to be your bottleneck
raven halo
so I might still have a hard time...
wicked oak
and the RenderThread runs faster on ps4
raven halo
holy crap
wicked oak
i think 130 or so
raven halo
isn't 100 very low?
wicked oak
not really. PSVR pixels are different
but still, this is testing on a Pro devkit
wich has much higher pixel performance
the GPU is a goddamn monster
i think it has the raw power of a GTX 480
raven halo
ahhh gotcha. Thought you were talking about vanilla PS4.
I actually wonder if sony will send both kits
wicked oak
yet it has the much lower driver overhead consoles have
its sad how devs arent doing shit
no, it sends one or the other
mine is a Neo devkit
it has a "old" mode toggle
that downclocks it
storm vortex
@raven halo was that recently that Oculus sent you a dev kit for free?
raven halo
that's very cool
storm vortex
nice
wicked oak
so got 4 headsets WITH touch
storm vortex
Do you get to keep them?
wicked oak
yes
raven halo
@storm vortex hmmm I think it was back in November. The touch devices arrived december 1st I think
dusk vigil
If you have a good proto or better, they are very supportive
raven halo
I don't know if they still send them out, though
wicked oak
i had literally nothing but shitty DK2 prototypes in the first
and in the second, i just had Deathwave
so i went, got a vive
published VRMultigames a month after
storm vortex
I'll probably wait until I have a close to finished game before I target rift since that store sounds like a pain due to strict framerates
raven halo
yeah me too. went from DK2 to Vive
wicked oak
got 40k installs
raven halo
then got free Rifts
dusk vigil
Get on the secret vr devs slack and nudge callum : )
storm vortex
I mean I am targeting 90fps but I don't feel like dealing with that kinda painful nitpicking for a hobby project
raven halo
callum is out of office
dusk vigil
ah yes thats right
dusk vigil
hang on, I get you a link
raven halo
awesome! 😄
wicked oak
thats the section where they have the more unpolished games
like VRMultigames and DWVR
i want to get out of it XD
raven halo
haha
storm vortex
Ah I didn't realize they have that. Is that like their Early Access?
wicked oak
the needs to actually go to the "main" section
are severe
its worse than their early access
early access are titles that have a high degree of polish, but are EA anyway
raven halo
I don't even know how to get to the gallery from the oculus app
wicked oak
its on the main page, just scroll down a bit
raven halo
I'll check it out
wicked oak
check how Obduction is there XD
thats what happens when it runs slow
becouse obduction DOES run slow
dusk vigil
@raven halo , and anybody else who is hardcore into VR : https://t.co/tltfdGvqXf You have to submit a form, and be quite verbose in telling about yourself and your project to be let in. They are keeping it tight
raven halo
ok, this is perfect
dusk vigil
Very good international society
raven halo
I will definitely check it out
storm vortex
is that ran by a company or just a private group?
dusk vigil
Private group thing
wicked oak
but hot damn, im going to have to manually start merging meshes and optimizing triangles and textures 😦
dusk vigil
By the way, I am called @karmington there for reference "Who Invited You"
wicked oak
to make those buildings in the cathedral map not use thousands of small meshes
storm vortex
oops I wrote simrak
dusk vigil
No big deal
I oughta stop using different aliases
It's your project that counts the most anyway
raven halo
cool! form filled!
storm vortex
I don't have any public videos of my project out yet so I didn't have much to share, if they don't let me in I'll try again in a week or two when I have a video to share.
dusk vigil
It will be nice to have more UE users there, it is dominated by Unity peeps : p
storm vortex
Just lurking in this VR room I have learned a ton.
raven halo
@wicked oak in my experience it's very hard to find designers/artists with the enough technical knowhow to not mess things up in terms of draw calls. I'm not saying that they are not out there, just saying that there are a LOT who don't have those technical sensibilities
I also can't show anything right now from my game
although I'm dying to show some stuff
dusk vigil
Best ones started work in mobile or even before so they have an ingrained thriftiness
Looking forward to it : ) Our prototype is still in very rough shape, but focusing on the core mechanics before getting it shiny
wicked oak
Deferred-noninstanced is slower
17 ms
so final verededicts, on this scene wich has simple pixel shader, but a fuckton of static meshes
raven halo
I wouldn't be so sure. I've worked for Gameloft for 3 years and let me tell you... I've seen some unbelievable shit
wicked oak
fastest: Deferred-instanced. At 15 ms 9500 Api Calls
second is Deferred-noninstanced at 17 ms 1400 api calls
3rd is Forward Instanced, 20 ms at 9500 Api Calls
raven halo
what's the triangle or vert count in your scene? since instanced might have quite an impact if there are a lot of verts in the scene
dusk vigil
by api calls you mean objects with Tick?
wicked oak
sorry, not 9500 on Forward instanced
dusk vigil
or Draw calls
wicked oak
15.000
pretty much drawcalls
but not exactly drawcalls
more granular
each few of them is 1 drawcall
anyway, the worst of all was Forward non-instanced, at 20k API calls and 29 ms render time
dusk vigil
Rendering API calls in general then I guess?
dusk vigil
ok
still frost
how is the VR dev coming along is it catching up to unitys or is there a still a bit to go ?
raven halo
I can't believe deferred instanced is faster than forward instanced. (I'm assuming you are testing forward with MSAA?)
still frost
most post / research is from like 2015 / early 2016
wicked oak
nope, all are using TAA
still frost
talking about foward rendering or w/e
raven halo
@wicked oak do you have a theory as to why deffered is faster in this case than forward?
wicked oak
one of the issues is the base-pass
in deferred,ive disabled the depth pre-pass
this makes it so the scene isnt being rendered twice
one for depth only, other with shaders
well, its basically the main issue
still frost
@wicked oak Hmm so unlike before now unreals process of developing for VR is a bit better than before and up to par for unity?
raven halo
I'd say it has improved A LOT over 2015
wicked oak
from Forward Instanced
4.5 miliseconds on the Depth Prepass
thats something that just doesnt happen on deferred
unless you tell it to
to be fair, this is a extreme test
raven halo
is this Render Doc?
dusk vigil
@still frost My feel is that all the basic stuff is working nicely now. Missing, stuff like VRTK ( 3rd party toolkit ) and Mixed Reality capture support.
wicked oak
a scene with massive amounts of drawcalls and little shader use
VRTK is for casuals
you program your own stuff
ue4 has the motion controller interface, and hmd interface
still frost
VRTRK is basically a free asset preprogrammed for newer people right?
to get started quicker?
wicked oak
i have the same code running PSVR/Vive/Oculus
the SAME code
only changes are imput mapping
dusk vigil
It's super useful to get people started
still frost
VRTK&
raven halo
<- same here
wicked oak
you cant do that on unity
raven halo
it's freaking awesome
wicked oak
definitely
dusk vigil
Agreed, makes life a lot nicer
wicked oak
im also writing my own multiplatform leaderboard 😃
so i can use leaderboard and it works on everything
raven halo
sweet!
wicked oak
built-in leaderboard API is broken as fuck
storm vortex
@still frost I've b een using this which provides a lot of stuff for free. https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?116782-VR-(OpenVR)-Expansion-Plugin
still frost
@storm vortex thanks man
I was thinking of going unity , but something is just tturning me off from it
for VR development
wicked oak
not that good of a choice
the thing that made it good, wich is the Valve plugin
is:
non-mantained
problematic with oculus
only 8 lights at once
raven halo
they abandoned it, didn't they?
wicked oak
grab ue4, get your fancy as hell renderer, and use its tools
plus truly multiplatform VR
raven halo
cool thing about UE4 right now is you can really feel the progress that happens for VR in every new version
they are taking it seriously
still frost
ah I see thanks for the info and stuff
I just have to get use to the BPs tbh
used to the C# coding here and there
about to binge watch the Intro BP tutorials that teach you about the light but start with the VR character instead of 3rd person
same thing with that udemy with ben tristin
dusk vigil
Took me a few weeks to get comfy with BP but now they seem ok, soon ready to start opening up the C++ side, but kinda feeling that the less I muck around in the engineroom the better... Time will tell. Only started learning UE this winter as well.
In any case, Norman3d and vblanco, great listening to you guys, I jotted down a lot of notes for the PSVR side : )
still frost
same here thanks for your guys input
full junco
@dusk vigil that vr devs slack, why is it interesting? what do they talk about there? if most people there are unity devs, how is that slack relevant for ue4 users?
dusk vigil
There's loads of channels for VR related interests. Also they have Vive and Oculus representatives hanging around, just today they gave out the e.mail to contact to apply for Tracker pucks
full junco
ok
still frost
niceee
full junco
and who runs that slack?
dusk vigil
yezzer, katie_tripixels, slumbdog, nathan
If they say anything to you : ) nathan made SculptrVR, katie made Unseen Diplomacy
full junco
ok
dusk vigil
yezzer I dont know so much about, I think he founded it
slumbdog is from the BBC i think
full junco
BBC? 🤔
dusk vigil
I made the first Finnish VR game on Steam before Vive came out, back in DK2 days
raven halo
sort of a virtual tour through the ISS
dusk vigil
Big national broadcast houses sponsor new media. Our VR development hub is in YLE ( Finnish Broadcastin Co ) buildings, they are giving us a nice big space for free, dozen teams working on stuff
no strings attached
raven halo
oh man
full junco
oh
raven halo
wish there was something like this in Spain
dusk vigil
Make it happen : )
We started off having small meets, expanded fast, last year we got 250,000 euro funding, getting more from EU this year... FIVR.fi
Nonprofit organization
raven halo
that's awesome!
dusk vigil
It rocks... I had lost my previous job, decided to make a VR game on my savings, now I run the hub halftime and the other half making my own stuff
Other people board of directors handle the money stuff, I just take care of the office and teams
Time to settle down for the night, getting late here in Helsinki. Pleased to get more active here as well, as our game starts forming I am certain to be hanging out here more and more.
full junco
heres always a lot of activity
raven halo
@wicked oak with forward renderer what should the "early Z-pass" setting be? does it even matter?
wicked oak
its the point of the forward renderer
it needs it
its a tiled forward+ renderer
it renders depth
then it calculates the light areas, and puts the light data in a texture
for the tiles
then, when it renders, it grabs the data from there
raven halo
yeah but why does it even give you the option to select "none"?
wicked oak
doesnt matter, it will overide
raven halo
ok, ok, thought so
I think I'm going to give Render Doc a go and check out what differences the different renderes really make in my specific game
raven halo
is anyone using RenderDoc to profile? do you need the RenderDoc plugin for UE4 for that?
full junco
I only use profilegpu, renderdoc sounds awesome though 😄
grim condor
making some progress on my VR game - https://youtu.be/wI0pauZw2wE
silk lodge
@grim condor can you use nvidia flow to make snazzy?
who wants to try this 5 second bit of this trailer in vr? https://youtu.be/Tf4sa0BVJVw?t=69
clever sky
You mean like Smashbox?
Feels great.
Also a great showcase for the potential of VR over normal gaming.
i.e. feels like you're socializing in a public area before a game.
granite jacinth
Nah
I meant like dev for MP
Do a Lobby first and then server travel to new map
storm vortex
I think I would probably prototype the game play first and then add the lobby.
Definitely lobby though with other people. I love the lobby in Art of Fight since you can run around and shoot guns and hang out.
granite jacinth
don't care about all that though
I was just wondering if there was any reason to have one if it wasn't needed
Extra fluff stuff is alright
But was wondering if it absolutely needed one, but I guess I do, in some shape
Since I need to host or join before session creation
storm vortex
The biggest thing I didn't like about Onward when I tried it was when I died I was in an empty room with nothing to do but watch the game. So if you have a game where you have to sit out after you are out I'd make something to do.
clever sky
Give dead players turrets
wicked oak
isnt "Max Steel" from a kids TV show?
kinda like the Ben10 show or other similar things
the suit is really fucking cool btw
reminds me of warframe suits
raven halo
Hey @wicked oak I took a look at RenderDoc last night and managed to get it to work on builds. How did you get the draw list to be grouped in the different passes? Is that only possible if you use the RenderDoc plugin for Unreal?
wicked oak
in fact, its all automatic
i just did a Development build, and attached it to it
and it gives me all the passes well and that
raven halo
Ahhh that might be it, I used it on a shipping build
wicked oak
how does it do it? it seems to be the same as the "control+, "GPU debugger
same passes i mean
are they annotated in the code?
raven halo
By passes I meant each step
Like the Basepass etc
I'm not seeing them grouped at all, and in the screenshot you shared yesterday they were
I'll try the development and I'll let you know if it works
wicked oak
its probably going to be that
it gives you the full timeline of all the passes
Renderdoc is quite interesting
and its open source
and works on modern opengl, DX11-12, and Vulkan
as far as i know, its the only fully featured vulkan debugger
and it has a code library
if you include that, you can add special support
maybe ue4 has it
to get better data
raven halo
Yesterday I found out that we left in a couple of decals from when we were still in deferred. They don't show up in forward of course, but the quads and the draw calls are still there!
storm vortex
http://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2016/09/09/doom-2016-graphics-study/ That's a cool post where they used RenderDoc to break down DOOM
wicked oak
yeah, great article
raven halo
Oh! I'll take a look!
storm vortex
There's another guy that does a really good one on GTA5 and a few other big games
wicked oak
doom renderer is 100% tailored to what they are doing
ue4 forward is a generic version of that
raven halo
How is the doom forward renderer different than Unreals? Is it doing anything better?
wicked oak
its much more tailored to what doom needs
for example, the slimmed down GBuffer that it uses to add TAA and SSAO and similar stuff
or the way it renders frosted glass
of doing a pass that smoothes the image
then renders the glass
and grabs the pre-smoothed image
also, megatextures
and the fact that it only uses a handful of shaders
raven halo
Just skimmed through the article! Love the glass stuff!
wicked oak
its a way to optimize that a lot
becouse you just do a fullscreen shader a couple times
uses more memory of course
but its a LOT more optimal and looks better than doing that frosted shader on the glass material itself
cobalt relic
UE4 is a generalist game engine
It has to work with water, metal, rock, flesh, cartoon
You can do much better by not supporting all rendering situations
wicked oak
yeah, exactly
also, doom has the megatexture stuff
so basically, most environment is rendered with only ONE shader
that makes it super optimal, as you can go full fast path on 1 shader for everything
no switches
bind shader, bind geometry, render, bind geometry, render, bind geometry, render, and so on
in ue4 each material is a shader
thats one of the main reasons doom on vulkan runs that much fast
they can have the rooms generate their command buffers for rendering, and they just reuse them over and over
cobalt relic
Then again, Doom is very monotone as a game
I hope they don't use too many bits on the green ad blue channels, because those sure don't get much love
Dishonored 2 runs on a IdTech fork with a much more diverse artistic direction
storm vortex
I think Dishonored 2 runs on the pre DOOM version of IdTech.
cobalt relic
"based on Id Tech 6 [but with] rewritten quite everything that's 70% of the engine"
Both Doom and DH look really nice, in any case.
wicked oak
but DH runs shitty
Doom is a marvel of engineering
60 fps on consoles, 200 fps on PC
raven halo
by the way, I confirm that there is a difference in RenderDoc between a shipping build and a development build
a development build will give you lots more details in renderdoc
full junco
what's does render doc tell you that you can't see in profile gpu?
raven halo
all the textures that are being used at that particular moment, as well as every single draw call
you can even see how long it takes to render each particular draw call
you see all the buffers as well
full junco
ok
wicked oak
full junco
so you can better see what's taking the most time in the base pass?
@wicked oak whats the value of ALLOW PROFILE GPU IN TEST?
test would be a better test case than development
so setting that value to true and then package in test would be best I think
wicked oak
there are direct renderdoc stuff in the code
it does check if renderdoc is capturing
and seems to use some kind of generic debug info
mighty carbon
Void engine is idTech 5 rewritten
as Dishonored 2 started way before idTech 6 was production ready
idTech 5 was even more simple than idTech 6
idTech 5 is basically fancy idTech 3
(virtual textures, all baked, simple shadows from characters, etc)
I was thinking at one point that it would be so nice if someone (I looking at you, John Carmack) would create a slim and fast engine for VR (to equally run well on Gear VR and desktop VR)
but then writing such engine wouldn't be a problem. The problem will be making robust tools, docs and support network.
I wouldn't want to go back into Quake modding days o.O
safe hamlet
Is there really no way to detect Gear VR mount/unmount events (4.14.3)?
safe hamlet
No, haven't asked there yet. Figured it might be faster to ask in here 😃
I'll ask there as well though 😉
mighty carbon
nah, I am the only one here who digs Gear VR (I know a few folks here have Gear VR, but I've never seen them answering Gear VR related questions) and I don't know if that functionality is exposed to BP 😊
storm vortex
Posted some footage from the game I've been working on for anyone interested. https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/5nreq0/almost_dark_fps_preview/
safe hamlet
alright, thanks @mighty carbon 😉
fair cairn
this is soo cool ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oxrQDBr6Mo
clever sky
That is pretty sweet.
But there's already an Unreal app on the Steam store that does it really well too
Thread Studio
Actually an advertising app for a T-shirt maker.
Or something.
Pretty sweet one though.
odd garnet
If anyone is in Austin we'll be at the VR Austin meetup this month!
vivid cargo
has anyone does space/zero grav in VR? did you find it disorienting?
eternal inlet
looks awsome with the posing
granite jacinth
Did something change in 4.14.3 to enable vr in packaged builds?
-vr, stereo on, enable hmd console cmds/nodes aren't working for me
(or alt-enter)
scenic slate
Any idea, where to get the Oculus VR-hands into Unreal? Are they free assets somewhere?
raven halo
@scenic slate I've not been able to find them. If a Touch SDK was sent to you, then you'll find a URL to a zip file containing a confidential content example from epic with hands. But these are Epic's, they are not the Oculus hands
scenic slate
Thanks.
real needle
@vivid cargo Look up Adrift
I know plenty of people that can't play it, but also plenty of people that love it
Either you decide to cater to everyone, or you decide to cater to some
quartz bay
Does anyone know how to put assets into the SteamVR environment while a game loads a level?
mighty carbon
clever sky
Man.
Why does H3VR get so much love.
Ok, I know whyt it does.
But the gun interaction is confusing as hell a lot of the time!
This slides, but this doesn't.
Maybe I just need to get used to its control scheme. Spent 20 minutes messing around trying to load/unload/fire weapons.
It's just such an awkward combo though.
storm vortex
@clever sky I really like H3VR because of how detailed it is. I agree that some interactions are confusing or inconsistent though. For my game I'm trying to keep it some what between. Down is always eject mag, the button pointing left if in your right hand or right if in your right hand is release slide. Although now that I think about it that doesn't make too much sense. I'm not doing realistic magazine loading though. I panic enough as it is trying to get the magazine near the gun when guys are shooting at me so I want some more more arcadey for that.
clever sky
More arcadey = use a big hit box
get the mag near enough the hit box = eh, good enough, you've reloaded!
Do a little lerping animation to make it nice.
storm vortex
yeah and as of now you don't even have to align it since im basing it based on mesh hits the interaction point. I'll eventually probably add interact points on the meshes and force them to be roughly the same direction. Right now you can put them in anyway or sideways 😄
storm vortex
That's one of the Rick and Morty animators isn't it?
storm vortex
oh she looks similar to one of their lead artists
seems like something she would do
clever sky
Oh. Well. Rick and Morty has a hot lead artist then 😛
What's her name do you know?
the artist
not the model
storm vortex
That's her on the right she looks similar to me, but I'm half asleep right now. I'm looking forward to playing their VR Job Simulator game when it comes out.
clever sky
Ah nice 😃
Nice looking gal, but only superficially similar to the model.
(age, hair color, etc)
So, what's the deal with stereolayers? How do you get them showing up?
I added a stereo layer component to my pawn
stuck it to the camera
Added a texture. Nothing.
real needle
@wicked oak and @full junco Was experimenting with them earlier, I think the outcome was... twofold?
dry shell
This gif in no way describes how awesome it is in VR to cast spells, but it gives you an idea of our wizard (so far)
"Sith" Lightning- http://i.makeagif.com/media/1-14-2017/XdDC0y.gif
Eldritch Blast- https://j.gifs.com/lO0MRM.gif
Fireball- http://i.makeagif.com/media/1-14-2017/wDYhGF.mp4
Firebolt- https://j.gifs.com/8qgB33.gif
full junco
@clever sky I created a thread about them being buggy
full junco
I think they are too buggy for being used currently
clever sky
mmmm
wicked oak
stereo layers do work
wicked oak
literally everyone using that art pack to do rpg games
its wave shooter all over again
odd garnet
It's a decent simple pack. I've seen it used in a guys top down a while back
The important part is what you do with them
wicked oak
right now i got a cooperative dungueon crawler
but im seeing it to common on the fantasy style, so ill make it scifi
my warrior will have a shotgun with a bayonet, for example
im reading stuff like shadowrun and D&D/pathfindier scifi modules, and i kinda like the settging
odd garnet
Good source material! @wicked oak
I remember playing one pathfinder that was like Star Trek. More role playing than actually combat. Lots of puzzles but that's because my DM was sadistic
wicked oak
im seeing dungueoning rpgs spammed everywhere
DWVR already suffered from there being TOO MANY wave shoteres
i dont want that again
odd garnet
I think wave shooters are more limiting than rpgs
wicked oak
in my first DWVR videos, there was a considerable positivtity
when i released "oh not another wave shooter"
im seeing dungueoning games by the loads
odd garnet
What is DWVR, the game on steam yeah?
odd garnet
People like wave shooters. You just gotta do them well. Raw Data is a wave shooter and that's a great game.
SPT also a great game
I'm glad they exsist as they are fun to play
wicked oak
yeah, but negativity is real
for my next game, i want something different than aeverything else
odd garnet
It'd be cool in a sci-fi dungeon thingy to have a breach and clear style.
When you bust down a door and it goes all slowmo
pew pew pew
"Tango down"
wicked oak
or more system shock style
i plan to do something slightly inspired by how destiny and warframe work
a game that is meant for coop
i find lack of really social games
odd garnet
Oh man yeah! System shock would be cool as h3||
wicked oak
still prototype phase
i got a magic bow with explosive arrows, movement, basic enemies, and rng map
all working MP
odd garnet
Noice
mighty carbon
how do I disable depth test on 3D widget ?
(so that regular 3D widgets in the world remain with depth testing enabled, by default, and the ones I attach to the camera have no depth test)
raven halo
I remember someone here mentioning they were turning on Mobile HDR on a GearVR project. Does that even work?
raven halo
so it's impossible to get 60fps on say... a Samsung S6?
raven halo
I don't think I need it yet
I'm just wondering
I'm going to start work on a small gearvr project
and I wanted to know what works and what doesn't
mighty carbon
I wonder if Unity does better job on HDR - I recall seeing bloom in Unity based games on Gear VR
well, in that case - HDR works, but hurts performance; dynamic lights don't work; stationary direct light works; stationary point lights might work, but will cast no shadows; multiview works but hurts performance (should be fixed eventually)
raven halo
I also wonder, do I have to change the renderer to forward? Do I also need to switch to MSAA? or is that all handled automatically?
ahhh that's another thing, should I leave multiview unchecked for now?
mighty carbon
no, forward rendering kicks in automatically (mobile VR always used forward render on Gear VR) and MSAA works automatically
yes, unchecked
also, use ES2 renderer - ES3.1 hurts performance badly
Vulkan doesn't work
mighty carbon
yep, under Android
but it's the default setting
just saying don't use ES3.1
or Vulkan
raven halo
gotcha
mighty carbon
think of Gear VR game as Quake 3 (graphics/physics wise)
if you keep to that kind of complexity / limitations, it would run fine
raven halo
is S7 a big enough difference where you could change anything really? like toggle any new graphic feature?
raven halo
I see
mighty carbon
S8 maybe will be significantly better allowing a lot of nice graphics features to be usable
better aim for S6 to cover larger audience
and since S6 will be getting cheaper after S8 is out, I get more people will be getting into Gear VR
raven halo
yep totally
I'm not sure if I have asked already, maybe I was just thinking it, but what about resolution? Is there a fixed screenresolution?
mighty carbon
😄 np
raven halo
workflow wise... what's the best way to preview the result on PC?
mighty carbon
none really
raven halo
thought so haha
mighty carbon
I got my project running on Gear VR, figured what it can handle and once I pretty much knew what's the limit for drawcalls / etc., I got basic stuff working (back button, touchpad, etc.) and now I work on gameplay solely in the Editor and PIE on PC
once I reach a milestone, I deploy to Gear VR to test it
but at the beginning you will be deploying, putting on the phone, testing it on Gear VR, rinse/repeat
annoying, but it is what it is
mighty carbon
yeah
mighty carbon
yeah, you should
odd garnet
Trying to line trace from my controller forward (like pointing a wand), no matter the forward vector it's really off target by +-30 degrees in the yaw
silk lodge
@mighty carbon doesn't unity not do hdr rendering when it does msaa?
mighty carbon
no idea really 😦
silk lodge
I've heard it doens't
which is why games like space pirate trainer have ugly dithering and crazy graphics issues
(I think)
mighty carbon
not sure.. I haven't worked with Unity much
silk lodge
I'm trying to avoid working in unity 😃
mighty carbon
I do know it's faster on Gear VR than UE4
silk lodge
I only work on pcvr
mighty carbon
it has better instancing/batching, view clipping distance, etc. which allows building much more complex levels than can be done in UE4
I am on Gear VR 😃
wintry escarp
mighty carbon
yeh
but supposedly Epic is "already aware" of HISMCs and ISMCs performing badly on Gear VR
I don't know if it means "we are looking into improving it" or "we know, but we don't have time for it right now" or something else
or, and draw distance for those doesn't work either
real needle
@mighty carbon Didn't you try the remote plugin for mobile?
mighty carbon
no, because it's no use with Gear VR
clever sky
Does anyone know much about updating render targets live?
I'm trying to drive FOV restriction via a material parameter collection... which links into the material that links into the render target... that is used by the stereo layer.
Managed to get the stereo layer stuff working finally kinda. But it's wonky!
clever sky
@real needle Basically, I want to be able to update it dynamically inside my BP
by driving a parameter
The desired effect is to grow and shrink the size of a radial gradient.
pearl tangle
scale the gradient texture itself?
also saw the road to vr article on your movement stuff @clever sky hows the game coming along?
clever sky
Yeah great 😃 Working on it now. Going to release soon. Want pre-release access?
pearl tangle
yeah thatd be awesome.haven't played or done any work in ages. been travelling for over a month. i have been home 3 weeks in the past 3 months hah. changed the movement system much?
clever sky
Yeah there are fairly substantial tweaks
And of course all the extra systems other than CAOTS 😃
Just working on better FOV restrict.
pearl tangle
yeah that 1 is rather interesting to play around with
il have to give it a download when i get back home, still on the road at the moment
pearl tangle
nah didn't get around to it. from all the rest of my flying around I earnt enough miles to do a free round the world ticket so made the most of that and went all over the place 😉
clever sky
Ah nice.
Sounds like you had fun. Bet you missed the conveniences of home while on the road for so long though 😃
pearl tangle
ah im pretty used to it so not a big deal. i have an untouched rift and touch and a few other gadgets waiting for me on my desk at work
clever sky
Ah yeah 😃
Hope you got an extra camera
Turns out, Oculus weren't exaggerating their 3rd camera recommendation for room scale.
pearl tangle
yeah thats what I had been trying to tell people for ages hah. COuldn't order 1 in Singapore since I had to do it over amazon since Oculus still doesn't ship there
clever sky
Dang.
Yeah, I put my 2 cameras up in opposite corners.
Starts off good.
Then 5-10 minutes in, they start drifting.
Or one of the controllers do.
Until I replace the battery.
Got my third camera, put that up, didn't change anything else. Everything happy.
pearl tangle
yeah definitely falling behind compared to the vive on the tracking side of things for room scale even though everybody was trying to say its just as good
clever sky
Well, with 3 cams it's pretty decent.
But yeah, still not quite as robust as the Vive.
pearl tangle
yeah there should apparently be the pro version of the lighthouses coming along this year too where we can add more sensors, I would say that starts to come along at the same time as the extra trackers
im really interested in that for rigging together larger spaces and for multi user shared space experiences
clever sky
Nice. You got a few pucks on the way?
So multiple users are tracked in the same space, as opposed to seperate by adjacent spaces?
pearl tangle
yeah thats the idea. great for custom experiences
clever sky
Put everyone on a boat ride.
pearl tangle
haha i may actually be doing that. or potentially a steampunk airship
pearl tangle
haha a few moving platforms and 4d effects and we can make some pretty cool stuff
clever sky
Or hire of a team of interns and make them move some barriers around 😛
pearl tangle
hah and slap people in the face with rubber bats
pearl tangle
thats the way of the future
clever sky
😄
feral maple
If anyone needs a good template for Oculus Touch hands, I found this the other day, seems amazing, has all the capacitive touch hand poses, and should get multiplayer support soon too! https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?133957-Single-Multiplayer-Touch-amp-Vive-Proteus-blueprint-only-Template
graceful junco
Oh, that's nice indeed. Thanks for sharing. Will come in handy when I integrate oculus touch controllers.
real needle
@clever sky What I would do is pull the render target in a dynamic material instance that has a parameter to control your circles radius, and then use the node draw material to render target to another rt and thats your output
clever sky
Thanks dmkiller. Good advice. I'll have a go at it again in the morning 😃
real needle
cool, lemme know how it comes out
clever sky
Or if you're around a bit, I'll poke it now
clever sky
Cool beans.
Btw you interested in pre-release access to my freedom locomotion VR demo?
Getting good feedback, but would be nice to have a few more eyes looking at it 😃
real needle
What is it?
clever sky
It's a locomotion system to hopefully revolutionize VR gaming.
real needle
open source or for sale or what?
clever sky
Make it more immersive. Bring multiple systems together and bring parity to them.
Nah, just a tech demo.
Won't be for sale for a while, given I'll need to refactor everything.
real needle
sure i'll try it out
if its good may end up using it in my title
when it comes out
clever sky
Sure. Feedback greatly appreciated 😃
real needle
@pearl tangle Where did you hear about more than two basestations?
The last time I spoke to valve they told me years at earliest
And during dev days they did show off the new lighthouses, but there was no talk about more than two
dusky moon
Guys, Do I have to be part of an Organization in order to ship a content to Oculus Store or Steam ?!
clever sky
Yes
wicked oak
steam lets you do as yourself
clever sky
You can be a legal company operating as a sole propieter.
dusky moon
humm , So I can fake it somehow through my friend's company
clever sky
But basically need to be a business entity of some sort.
dusky moon
@wicked oak you sure ?! they just ask for a payment method and good to go ?
real needle
@dusky moon Yes but it is not recommended, because you as a person is legible for any lawsuits or other nasty things
dusky moon
@real needle True that! the only concern is ... Can I change my organization on the go ? like for now I apply it from my friend's company and then when I registered mine, transfer it to the other ...
real needle
@dusky moon Yes we did something similar. The only caveat is that you need to transfer it to a different Steam account, you can't just change the info on the current
dusky moon
oops that's what I was worried about ... and does it apply to Oculus store too ?
real needle
I have no idea
But you can just make a different steam account and have it as your "financial account". Your regular account (that used to be the owner) can be promoted to an admin and you can basically do everything from it
dusky moon
ah Cool! thanks for the info man
also looking for suggestions about pricing ... I made a musical experience its two different tracks from a musician with 6 min total lenght , I was wondering 3-4$ for it
clever sky
Sorry for the inaccurate info!
dusky moon
no worries man!
full junco
@clever sky well you are correct for people outside of the USA I think
vocal maple
Hello. I am on htc vive and my framerate is 90 fps most of the time. However, once in a few seconds, my frame render time doubles almost always exactly (from 11 ms to 22 ms) and my fps halves to 45. Why does that happen with such precision and is there a way to fix that?
dusky moon
@vocal maple that's forced from SteamVR and you need to keep your framerate below 11ms all the time.
vocal maple
@dusky moon so what is happening is once every while my framerate goes to like 12 or 15 ms and steam vr forces it to double the frames?
i read something about it. It renders the same frame twice or something like that
dusky moon
@vocal maple well I was also confused the first time I noticed it but actually it's there for good 😃
vocal maple
@dusky moon I guess that its good if it helps prevent motion sickness. It is annoying when developing though because you can't see how much your performance drops in those moments. Fps is either 11 or 22...
dusky moon
True , but I guess profile gpu can tell you a more honest stat right ?!
vocal maple
Yeah. Is there anything more detailed that profile gpu though? Most of the time I end up with a base pass that is taking too long and no way to figure out why
dusky moon
try the new realtime gpu profiler , also stat unit Graph is a good one
their good to spot the bottlenecks
vocal maple
Thanks. I will read about them
granite jacinth
Has anyone of you ever tried to do a Local co-op experience with one HMD and (n) controllers on one PC?
In UE4
Or know anyone else that has?
I'm just curious if it's even possible.
granite jacinth
I mean, has anyone seen games like this?
real needle
@granite jacinth Look at the gitrepo I shared in UI, it gives you a different mirror mode
granite jacinth
I thought I did
granite jacinth
AH
granite jacinth
Oh that mixed reality thing @real needle ?
@opal bobcat wasn't talking two HMDs
one HMD and different screens for each controller player
or splitscreen or whatever
granite jacinth
But, anyway, I suppose if you had two instances
you could do multi-HMD
Yeah
There's a group in my class attempting to do that now
With Vive, but in Unity
opal bobcat
nods
granite jacinth
So I was wondering about if it could get done in UE4
opal bobcat
i mean i dont see why not you'd have to have multiple windows and it would be taxing
granite jacinth
Right
I'm curious to see their results
I'm just doing a "simple" 1v1 MP Vive game
granite jacinth
Um
It's alright
Interestingly enough
There are times where I can actually move my motion controllers on both vives WITHOUT the hacks/plugins
But, otherwise, the server takes control of both hands
So, obviously, natively...it's shit
You need to manually force replication of the motion controllers
real needle
@granite jacinth Yeah the mixed reality thing gives you a different render mode
granite jacinth
Yeah, I'll look into that later
vocal maple
Do you guys have ideas on how to implement something to the htc vive steam vr menu ingame?
granite jacinth
?
opal bobcat
mashbrothers: afaik those are closed source and part of steamvr
there might be some sort of plugin model for them but i havent heard of that
granite jacinth
Depends on what exactly he wants
vocal maple
ofk, not taking it. Just making something stylistically similar
vocal maple
for stuff like switching inventory
opal bobcat
ahh
granite jacinth
Someone smart made a series of tutorials on it
opal bobcat
yes i have done vr menus using widgets
opal bobcat
yeah thats a BP tutorial
granite jacinth
Goes through everything you need
opal bobcat
this is the one i based most of my c++ implmementation of vr interaction tools i came up with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYH2qjzpZGo&feature=youtu.be
i basically used his bp, and converted it manually to c++
vocal maple
cool. I made a 3d widget menu though. It spawns already. I'm interested in making this:
- player presses menu button
- game around him becomes ghostly and grey
- menu appears before him with placement similar to that of steam vr menu's position
The goal is to have the player feel as if he is sort of in a room with the menu, half detached from the gameplay around him
Any tips for design or implementation would be very appreciated
granite jacinth
You just did it
Now just do it
We gave you a jumpstart, so use them
You have to actually know what you're doing and once you do, you can do whatever you need
opal bobcat
you could do something where those objects are hidden but always follow the player pawn around, and you just make them visible when the menu button is clicked
in my case i created my widget menu on the fly whenever a new instance of my vr object was created
and it attatches itself to the controller so its always visible to the user
vocal maple
@opal bobcat aha! That is a great idea. It will make placing everything very easy. Thanks
opal bobcat
similar to how google does their tiltbrush menus
vocal maple
@granite jacinth Master Yoda, do you have ideas for how to make the world grey and ghostly when the menu spawns?
opal bobcat
i wonder if you can just do an alpha modification on the entire world hiarchey
andsomehow have your menu be outside of that
thats not something ive ever looked into
that way the world becomes spectral and the menu is the only solid item
that could help with occlusion issues of the user is facing a wall or something
vocal maple
@opal bobcat is that postprocessing stuff?
opal bobcat
no that might be a better idea, i was just thinking of somehow modifying the alpha channel values for all the world objects
not even sure ift hats possible or practical
you'd have to of course be able to restore them to their original values
which also might present problems
unless you dont use any alpha transparency in the first place
vocal maple
the best way I can describe the steam vr "post processing" effect is putting a grey film on the world, making the world seem flat and static
opal bobcat
oh yeah i know what it looks like
you can see an example of the similar thing if you use the steam chaperone
whenever you come close to a border the entire game fades and the chaperone comes on
vocal maple
I decided to make a post processing effect based on the post processing of water. All the tutorials use depth of field. I copied the settings exactly into my post processing volume, but depth of field just doesn't work. Is that because of VR project settings?
pearl tangle
@real needle Ah perhaps it was something Epic mentioned that they weren't meant to. Something along the lines of a Pro version, so not something for consumers to be doing at home but an opening up of the system for arcades and event stuff to do more custom work with it. EG. I am doing stuff with multiple people in a shared space so need 4 or more sensors to get proper coverage. Preferably 5 of them actually. 2 high on opposing corners, 2 low on the other opposing corners and 1 on the roof in the centre
@vocal maple DOF doesn't work properly for vr i dont think
vocal maple
@pearl tangle oh. Thanks for telling about that, I'll look for alternative ways to achieve my effect
@pearl tangle actually, there is a setting in the settings file for the project r.DepthOfFieldQuality=0 I think
i will mess around with it
pearl tangle
give it a shot
mighty carbon
@pearl tangle Do you think that political scandal in S.Korea with Samsung being deeply involved will affect S8 and next Gear VR release and support ?
pearl tangle
i can't imagine it to be honest. @mighty carbon it's a behemoth of a company, things keep on moving regardless of 1 guy