What's happening with VRWorks support

Hey there people,

I’m finishing up a really big VR project this week. Due to a bug in 4.14 that caused child actor references to crash the engine I upgraded to 4.15.
Point is, there is no VRWorks fork for version 4.15 of the engine. I don’t think this is logical, because it’s biggest feature was forward shading, which was specifically targeted at VR, but now the other VR optimizations are not available.

There used to be a fork of 4.14 on github.com/NvPhysX. It included the whole package of optimizations: lens matched shading, multires, single pass stereo and VR SLI.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I kind of need VRWorks to deliver my project in an acceptable state. Even with the GTX1080 that’s in the system now, the performance of not high enough to enable a sufficient screen size to get a sharp image. I also can’t revert back to 4.14 anymore, because I have committed way too much changes to my project (150+ hrs) to ever revert back to 4.14… In fact, I cannot even find the VRWorks fork on github anymore.

Is VRWorks being abandoned? I hope not, sounds very promising and I would very much like to use it.

Best of wishes.

As for the VRWorks 4.14 fork, here’s the link: https://github.com/NvPhysX/UnrealEngine/tree/VRWorks-Graphics-4.14

I’m not entirely sure what do you mean by saying you’ve upgraded to 4.15. If you’ve upgraded to launcher’s 4.15 then sorry pal, but stock engine version don’t have VRworks integration.

Hey kAzAAkAs,

Glad I’m not the only one in the exact same position (moved to UE4.15 because of the child actor ref crash, cannot use VRworks because the branch has not been updated to 4.15 yet and I don’t have enough C++/git experience to merge).

The NvPhysx branches of UE4 for VXGI, Volumetric Lighting, Flex and Flow have been updated to 4.15 recently, we can only hope the VRworks branch will follow in the next few days.
Even rough estimate from Nvidia or any communication about VRworks developpement would be great, our VR projects are in dire need of performance and LMS/MultiRes/VRsli allows to boost significantly frametime/framerate…

You may have been looking at the MultiRes branches by accident (they only go up to 4.13). The VRWorks-Graphics-4.14 branch is still there: https://github.com/NvPhysX/UnrealEngine/tree/VRWorks-Graphics-4.14

I wish NVidia would give some kind of public estimates on these branches so we could know how the work is going.

I’ve upgraded my project to 4.15 a long time ago, reverting back to 4.14 is out of the question with the amount of work that has been invested. Other than that 4.14 had a nasty bug that it impossible to work with for me.

Hey man, yes it sucks!

Child actors are such a core piece of functionality I’m absolutely baffled that an official release version had such a huge bug in it.
I’m having the problem that I always build all the core game functionality first, then create the environments and look into possible optimizations last. Due to the child actor bug I encountered during this first step, I’ve now hit a brick wall during the third step. It makes me kind of sad, I have to launch this project next monday and the maximum screen size with a GTX1080 I can reliably run is 140. It’s still really blurry. Even with all static lighting, instanced stereo, actor merging, optimized culling/LOD’s and all that I can’t hit my personal standard of clarity, which is a screen size of 180, which I feel I could probably have hit easily with VRWorks, at least comparable clarity using multires and lens matched shading. Not having a blurred out image increases the realism immensely.

I hope you are right in that VRWorks will soon follow the VXGI, flow and flex branches and whatnot! We can only hope. I suggest everybody that reads this who has the same problem sends them a personal message, kindly requesting the feature and why it’s relevant to you: https://developer.nvidia.com/content/nvidia-dev-support-submission-form

With 4.15’s main feature being forward shading, which is geared mainly at VR, I’m secretly hoping a fork is in the making…

I’m on 4.15 now, upgraded from 4.14. No VRWorks forks for that… ALso it turned out I did not have a subscription to the github repo of Nvidia, which is why I thought the repo’s were gone. Kind of stupid, github showing 404 whenever you do not have access has confused me since day one :'). I requested it now.

Well NVIDIA said they will keep their Tech updated with 2-3 weeks after the official release from Epic. They’ve merged flex to 4.14 at the beginning of March and flex is now updated to 4.15. VR Works been stuck on 4.11 for a long time and it seems to me NVIDIA got up to speed with the merges altogether so I have my hopes high.

what? VRWorks has a version for 4.14 https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/987899/vr-funhouse-modding/is-quot-full-vrworks-graphics-ue4-14-quot-on-the-road-map-/

It does but it hasn’t been updated from 4.11 for quite a long time, none of their branches have. It seems that after GDC, NVIDIA got up to speed with updates to their tech as far as UE4 implementation is concerned.

I’ve sent a request through the form you linked, now is the waiting game…

I got a response:

Hope he’s right! God I want to run my stuff at a higher screen size sooo bad! :o

Hah, got the exact same response. At least they see there’s some demand on it. :slight_smile:

I’ve been demoed foveated rendering yesterday (HTC Vive kit using SMI’s integrated eye tracker) and it really could change everything performance wise combined with LMS or MultiRes.

Exactly!

Wow, there is an eye tracker in the Vive?! That’s amazing! I work in a VR lab for psychological experimentation and this opens up a vast collection of possibilities for future research! Which software platform was this on?

Kind regards

SMIVision is the company you want to contact if you need an eye tracker mounted HTC Vive or Oculus Rift. There’s even a software suite for scientifical experimentations !

Last I saw their prices it was pretty hefty (4 digits number) and it doesn’t seem to have an sdk for Unreal ?

I’m joining the chorus asking for an update of the VRWorks branch to 4.15. I’ve been using it since it included UE4’s forward shading (4.14). Along with the above reasons, I’m wanting to be able to start using the new audio mixer.

Do you remember the exact price? Just curious. Since the original Vive is already 900 bucks, I suppose the price is bound to enter the 4-digit realm.

The lack of an Unreal SDK makes me sad though…

I can’t find a quote for smi’s mount, but it seems the company Pupil labs sells a (slightly) less accurate (120hz instead of 250hz) tracking solution for 1400€.

VRWorks for 4.15 is out https://github.com/NvPhysX/UnrealEngine/tree/VRWorks-Graphics-4.15

Woohoo ! Time to fire up VS and migrate projects to that branch !

YYYYYYYYYYYYEAAaAHHHHH!!!

Okay, so I cheered a little too early… I’ve enabled LMS and the others, but performance is exactly the same… very strange