VR Displays and Menus

[MorphusOne]

Hi Guys,

I'm trying to implement a better way to display information in VR. (Picture 1.)

Transparent curved screens seem the way to go but they have been a pain to figure out.

I've managed to get a curved screen to display the objects looked at dynamically but the GPU spikes are crazy and well transparency causes my text to render... you guessed it, transparent.

I've heard talk that 3d widgets will get the ability to be curved in the future but was wondering if any of you have any solutions for my current delima.

Is there a better way of doing this? (Picture 2.)

Cheers,

Chris

[Orkney]

Just throwing an idea out here and havent tested this myself. But if you map a curved screen to fit 0 to 1 UV space then somewhere in the level use a scene capture 2D onto a flat version of the 3D widget. You could then feed this through to a render target and then map the target to the curved screen. Not sure how performant this would be in VR though, could maybe set the scene capture to only update when the menu changes? Would kind of give a curved screen though

[Orkney]

Actually, I was just testing this out when i noticed that when you add a 3d widget component to a BP, there is a 'Geometry Mode' where you can select Cylinder instead of plane. Works perfectly

[Fronzelneekburm]

You can set the alpha level for transparency - between 0 (totally transparent = invisible) and 1 (Opaque, not transparent at all) there's much in between.

I am not sure if curved is the final revelation. It depends on use - for a main menu i guess it's OK. But for small stuff like an info popup or a small select menu i will keep with my flat planes.

Another possibility to display info in VR is to make a font material and disable the depth layer - that way it's always on top, no clipping. Could use that for important emergency messages like "You play since over an hour please take a break!"-.