VR Expansion Plugin

[mordentral]

The base template works, I've clearly broken something. I'll have to go through it again. Thanks anyway.

My Base template, or Epics?

Also the crash dump is showing that it is getting an empty Matrix and trying to InverseFast it, I have only seen that from the VR system when room setup isn't performed (IE: switching between beta and std SteamVR branches) and it gives an empty matrix for the HMD.

[MrCheese]

Yours. I'm using standing only for both setups, I'll try setting up room bounds and see if that helps. Thanks.

[Resolve]

Does this have a dominant hand option?

If not, it'd be cool to add a "primary" and "secondary" hand configuration that allows the user to switch in options.

[mordentral]

Does this have a dominant hand option?

If not, it'd be cool to add a "primary" and "secondary" hand configuration that allows the user to switch in options.

? Neither hand currently has functionality in the demo template over the other one. They both do the exact same things. If you need hand specific mechanics that would be something YOU would add as a game option.

[michaelwbell]

I have been having heaps of fun learning from this fantastic template. I have come across one thing that I can't solve. I am sorry if it is extremely obvious:

I am trying to use the GrippableBox component to allow the user to pull back the Slide on a firearm - just like in your Gun template example.
In my case I want the GrippableBox to be limited in the Y axis, only able to translate in the -Y direction.

It seems every time I put a negative value in the Max Linear Translation, the Gripable box will only 'snap' to that max location, it wont smoothly move with the hand. And it will only happen if I move the motion controller in the opposite direction to what I want to.


In my example
-The GrippableBox initial linear translation for Y is 7 (local space)
-I want it to end at -1 (local space)
-I enter a Max Linear Translation of -8.

As a result, if I move the motionController in the positive Y direction, the grippableBox will Snap to the desired location. When i move the hand out of the way, it snaps back to the initial value.

Do the GrippableBox limits only work in positive values or have I missed something?

[mordentral]

I have been having heaps of fun learning from this fantastic template. I have come across one thing that I can't solve. I am sorry if it is extremely obvious:

I am trying to use the GrippableBox component to allow the user to pull back the Slide on a firearm - just like in your Gun template example.
In my case I want the GrippableBox to be limited in the Y axis, only able to translate in the -Y direction.

It seems every time I put a negative value in the Max Linear Translation, the Gripable box will only 'snap' to that max location, it wont smoothly move with the hand. And it will only happen if I move the motion controller in the opposite direction to what I want to.


In my example
-The GrippableBox initial linear translation for Y is 7 (local space)
-I want it to end at -1 (local space)
-I enter a Max Linear Translation of -8.

As a result, if I move the motionController in the positive Y direction, the grippableBox will Snap to the desired location. When i move the hand out of the way, it snaps back to the initial value.

Do the GrippableBox limits only work in positive values or have I missed something?

I may re-think how the limits work with interaction enabled components, it is a little messy and overly complicated at the moment. But with how it works currently you would want to set the MINIMUM limit, that is how far in the negative direction that it is allowed to go (relative to starting location). Maximum limits only effects positive movement. The naming is...not ideal, and I would like to restructure it entirely eventually but since it works atm I have been looking at other things.

Probably I should throw out the starting location and just keep minimum / maximum values instead, think that would make more sense in the end.

[michaelwbell]

currently you would want to set the MINIMUM limit

Oh no way, I can't believe I missed that. My bad - I miss-understood what the minimum limit did. Thanks for the quick reply!
When testing out the limits in positive values the interaction with the motion controllers has been so smooth.
Can't wait to try it out this evening. Thanks again!

[MagicBots]

SimpleVRCharacter moves the actor with the headset's offset so yes that character will change the location of the tracked space, with the SimpleVRCharacter the HMD is pretty much always at 0,0 XY (visually) and the controllers are offset to account for it. Using the "GetOrientationAndPosition" node will still return the HMDs real world location in the tracking space, but for game play since the tracking space moves with it you would have to change the actors location to that offset at begin play.

So you would either want to account for that and move the actor itself in game based on the HMD location, or use the VRCharacter instead which just has the collision follow the HMD instead.

In UE4 your tracked space is centered on the actor holding the HMD/Controllers.

Using GetOrientationAndPosition and offsetting my actor plus "stereo on" after character class is valid does work for my purposes of staying correct to the hmd location in roomscale with SimpleVRCharacter at BeginPlay. Thanks for that. I'm curious to know though what the "soft rules" are that you are breaking with the VRCharacter because it looks like it is a little more appropriate for my setup with it's ability to offset capsule. I'd like to offset the capsule to a derived pelvis location. All is working with the SimpleVRCharacter, but if it doesn't sound too dangerous, I think I will switch over to VRCharacter for the more versatile capsule treatment.

[Resolve]

? Neither hand currently has functionality in the demo template over the other one. They both do the exact same things. If you need hand specific mechanics that would be something YOU would add as a game option.

Oh ****, duh. I haven't started my project yet, was just curious after reading lefty plights online. Good to know. I prefer hand agnostic style.

[mordentral]

Using GetOrientationAndPosition and offsetting my actor plus "stereo on" after character class is valid does work for my purposes of staying correct to the hmd location in roomscale with SimpleVRCharacter at BeginPlay. Thanks for that. I'm curious to know though what the "soft rules" are that you are breaking with the VRCharacter because it looks like it is a little more appropriate for my setup with it's ability to offset capsule. I'd like to offset the capsule to a derived pelvis location. All is working with the SimpleVRCharacter, but if it doesn't sound too dangerous, I think I will switch over to VRCharacter for the more versatile capsule treatment.

Well technically the root component is supposed to be the "root" of the actor and is regarded as the zero point of it. The VRCharacter offsets the collision and movement foot position to a relative location from that zero point. Its possibly more unstable because it means I had to go in and manually revise most of the movement functions to make it work, it also accesses the physics thread every tick to re-position the physics collision capsule to account for it, this all means that it is slightly more CPU intensive than a standard character (though barely).

That being said, should VRCharacter prove stable longterm, I prefer it over the simple one as it opens up more possibilities.



*Edit* Also sorry to everyone that plugin updates have been slow past two weeks, I have a big project at work that is taking up a lot of time. Will have plenty of time over my two week vacation coming up though to bash out some new stuff.

[Kelen]

Thanks for making this awesome plugin
One question please: is there a way to change the mass/speed of the thrown objects? I've tried changing the mass scale but it doesn't seam to have any effect. Thanks!

[mordentral]

Thanks for making this awesome plugin
One question please: is there a way to change the mass/speed of the thrown objects? I've tried changing the mass scale but it doesn't seam to have any effect. Thanks!

The issue with vr is that unless you want to add latency/slowdown to the movements of held items they are going to be affected by an infinite mass / infinite force influence (the controllers), players have no actual force feedback so they don't get slowed down by the weight of objects and it is unnatural to have it happen because of this.

If you want to simulate drag on heavier objects you can change the release velocity of them based on their mass, there is a "Optional linear velocity" / "Optional angular velocity" option on the drop node where you can plug in the velocities you want, so you could take the velocity of the released object and scale it by an amount based on its mass to simulate throwing heavier objects less far.

I didn't automate this because it is heavily gameplay influenced and there are a ton of different possibilities.

If you wanted to fake difficulty picking up heavy items you could also lower the stiffness of a physics enabled grip way down to where it does not easily rigidly hold an object.

[UE4Hobbyist]

Hey mordentral, just letting you know that there seems to be a small problem with the move to AI node when using the VR pawn. At the end of the path the character freezes for a couple of seconds as you can see from the video. The problem is probably the Z distance from the goal from what I can understand.

I will work around it by adding a service in my behaviour tree that aborts the movement command

[mordentral]

Hey mordentral, just letting you know that there seems to be a small problem with the move to AI node when using the VR pawn. At the end of the path the character freezes for a couple of seconds as you can see from the video. The problem is probably the Z distance from the goal from what I can understand.

I will work around it by adding a service in my behaviour tree that aborts the movement command

You are using AI nodes for a VR pawn without a possessing character? Is there a reason why its a VRcharacter?

I'm just curious because I didn't touch AINavigation in the VRCharacter due to not seeing it as likely to be used, the Simple Character should work with it out of the box. If there is a common use case for AI Navigation for the VRCharacter I could probably go in and fix it up.

[Kelen]

@ mordentral
Thanks for the quick reply, I'll check out your suggestions. My main problem was that, when I throw a large object, it lands almost right in front of me and I couldn't find a way to make it lighter.

Thanks again, hopefully I'll dig out some solution with velocity change.