Getting Started with VR

Here are a few helpful links to documentation, videos, and tutorials to help you get started with VR Development in Unreal Engine 4.

DOCUMENTATION:

  - [Virtual Reality Development](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/VR/index.html)
  - [Virtual Reality Best Practices](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/VR/ContentSetup/index.html)
  - [VR Cheat Sheet](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/VR/CheatSheet/index.html)
  - [Test Out VR Content](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/Oculus/QuickStart/5/index.html)	
  - [Oculus Rift Quick Start](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/Oculus/QuickStart/index.html)
  - [Oculus Rift Development](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/Oculus/index.html)
  - [Vive Development](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/SteamVR/index.html)
  - [Additional Resources](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/Oculus/QuickStart/6/index.html)
      - [Enabling Gear VR Menu](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/GearVR/GlobalMenu/index.html)

VIDEOS:

  - [Virtual Reality Playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZlv_N0_O1gZaB0IgQEnO9WOXYRx3Puvo)

TUTORIALS:

Wiki Tutorials

       - [Oculus Rift Wiki](https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Oculus_Rift)

BLOG POSTS:

  - [Virtual Reality with Unreal](https://www.unrealengine.com/vr-page)

Plugins

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

  • There is a VR Template project in the editor to help you get started.
  • Couch Knights is available on the launcher
  • Showdown is available on the launcher

If there is some specific information related to VR development that you feel is missing from our documentation or tutorials, please let us know by creating a post in the Feedback section. Thanks!

guy eVRdayVR put it plain simple in video:

Also could help to automate some needed commands as well:

Disable realtime update of viewport (upper left corner of viewport) do help too if you are testing via “Launch” button. Any other subwindow that could be showing some real time stuff (as a shaded mesh) could impact on fps too, so close them before press the “Launch” button.

All my testing have been made on “Direct Mode”, no “Extended Mode” needed so far. BTW I have a GTX 660 ti, and got pretty solid 75 fps stereo after applying above procedures.

And don’t forget the best VR template around… VR Game Template - Community Content, Tools and Tutorials - Unreal Engine Forums

Hey Everybody,

How to enable the global Gear VR menu is now live and you can find it here.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/GearVR/GlobalMenu/index.html

Let us know if there are any questions or problems.

Cheers-

Maybe blog post about “How to make vr game” will be helpful for someone.

How about a progressing tutorial series on setting up and using the leap motion with UE4 to make a physics based Jenga game?

Are there any nearest future plans about releasing docs / tutorials on how to set up project using Blueprints (currently it seems that only C++ way is described; unless it’s almost identical to Blueprints project setup), how to work with Gear VR touch pad (tap, double tap, horizontal swipe fwd/back and hold, horizontal swipe fwd/back and release, vertical swipe up/down and hold, vertical swipe up/down and release, etc.), how to throttle CPU/GPU up and down, gaze controls, working with accelerometer, proximity, compass and barometer. All of that would be nice to work with in Blueprints and samples would be very welcomed too :slight_smile:

Thanks beforehand!

You have to setup a c++ project or just add c++ code to a blueprint project but you dont have to code in c++ after that. So it basically the same setup and work environment. The Touch pad only handles taps at the moment but I’m sure with the consumer release they should incorporate the buttons soon. I havent played around with throttling the CPU or GPU but I assume you would have to look at the mobile SDK for that stuff and then that would include coding. As for gaze best place to start is the VR template https://forums.unrealengine.com/show…-Game-Template you can easily incorporate the gaze system into your game and rip everything you dont need out (I’ve done before, relatively easy)

I wasn’t able to access your site. :frowning:

Hello,
How to do VR on IOS?

thanks

Would be also interesting for me!

Hmm, without the necessary personality skills to deal with real life (too much political correctness and sensitivity issues I presume) you wander off in Virtually Reality hoping to Discover who you truly are…just incredibly sad having to escape to electronic wasteland.

Is there a differences between the HTC Vive : “dev kit”, and the HTC Vive : “for (players)” ?

Can anyone explain, for 4.11, how I can get the in-game floor and real-world floors to line up correctly?

Nothing I try works quite right. The floor is either in my chest, or 1-2 feet below my real feet.
Setting the tracking origin to floor helps a little, but the game-world floor is still like 1-2ft below my real-world floor… And when I uncheck/disable “Lock to HMD”, the camera stops tracking the HMD all together…

Why is there no documented way to fix this? Nothing I’ve tried, even from the documentation, works quite right… Meanwhile, in various other VR games and apps, and the Oculus setup, the Virtual Floor and real-world floors line up perfectly fine.

Place your player blueprint 1 unit in Z-Axis and make sure the floor is placed at 0,0,0 coordinates.

Here is the link at which you’ll find a lot of useful info.

Hello!
I’ve recently started developing in VR and i have some question-marks that need some clarifying.
About the

… are they all

and

with VR?
Let’s say i buy a character or a landscape asset, will it work with VR?

That depends on the asset, they will say on the pack’s description if it was built for VR. You can see if the pack is built for VR by looking at the “Supported Platforms” section of the Content Details. You can take a lot of packs that don’t say they are VR ready and still use them, but there isn’t a guarantee that they will work as you would expect. Some packs include tutorials to convert the asset to be VR compatible even though it is not by default. Overall VR-assets are just assets built to be light-weight and low-demand for the hardware.

  1. Does a VR asset being compatible and supported by Win Platform depend on it being light-weight and low-demand on the hardware?
    -or
    Is there some kind of build design differences between a normal asset and a VR asset, like some settings of UE4, etc. ?
    (You don’t have to be too specific, but please give me some pointers to question.)

  2. Is there some kind of tutorial on converting assets to VR for oculus and vive?
    -or
    A general configuration or workflow that must be respected when the project is first started in UE4, in order to work?
    (You don’t have to be too specific, but please give me some pointers to question.)

Mention: i have read the Virtual Reality Documentation provided but feel free to point to it if the case need be.
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/VR/index.html

In general, you can use all the same assets. The only real differences for VR are:

  • performance and performance. Things that run with 30fps on a mid-range pc are simply to high fidelity for VR, since you basically need to render 2 images each frame, with a total of 90 fps. As a very rough estimate you could playtest in editor, do a “stat fps” command and check that you are always above 200fps.
    -** things that have a deadly impact** on VR performance are Translucency (i.e. water), reflections (i.e. water, metal) and dynamic lighting / shadows.
  • you can still buy existing assets and optimize them yourself; usually you can simplify materials used (i.e. Parallax Occlusion / Pixel Offset Materials are highly demanding and should be replaced by rather flat materials). If you are building rather small levels (meaning, no open world stuff) you wont run into an issue with polys too fast, but you can play around with minimum LODs just in case then.
  • take care with foliage and static lighting, as often foliage will look rather dark / black without dynamic lights. But you could play around with GI and Lighting Diff Boost for these to get better results
  • You wont need a special configuration, just make sure to execute a “stereo on” command on startup of the first level.

As you see, you have most things in your own hands, like minimizing translucency, disable dynamic lighting and dynamic shadows, remove all reflections. Basically you would need to do basic Optimizations like in the good old times when each 0.1ms saved on the render thread was a reason to party; People seem to have forgotten these times, fill the levels with effects and polys and full dynamic lighting and wonder why the performance is bad.

If the asset you are buying has no LODs for it’s models but a high poly count, thats the only thing then you wouldnt be able to reduce yourself (without external tools), so if in doubt, ask the marketplace seller if everything has multiple LODs (most should have) before buying.

Cheers,

Here is a article that tell you how to make you own virtual reality glasses.