State of Gear VR

Development Platform & Builds XR Development
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Hey Everybody,

I wanted to give an update on our progress with GearVR. While we’re not always as active as we could be here in the discussion with you all, we spend a bit of time gathering info from your posts to help guide our internal decision making. Here’s a look into where we are at with Gear VR and where we are going.

Controller Support
Controller support is on it’s way but this is not just being built for Gear VR but for Android as a whole. We are also re-working the way the engine interfaces with controllers in general to make things like having a player with two input devices easier to achieve.

MSAA Support
MSAA on mobile isn’t currently officially supported in the engine. We provided an alternative implementation on GitHub, but as most of you know, Lollipop broke that implementation. We’re investigating a proper implementation with our Mobile team, and will hopefully have an ETA soon.

Swipes & Example Content
We do have some tasks and time set aside for creating an example Gear VR project that shows you how to set up a lot of the things you are asking for. However the Learning Resources team has had to shift focus for the time being but this task has not been forgotten and will be picked up again once we get a few other tasks off our plate.

Gear VR Global Menu
Last Thursday a new section to the Gear VR docs was added that shows you how to get a very basic global menu to come up. It is very basic but it will give you a better idea about to call the global menu in your game. It should go live with the next doc update so be sure to check the Gear VR docs.

Oculus Audio SDK
Unfortunately, in general, UE4 does not support spatialized audio on Android. Our audio programmer is currently in the process of overhauling the audio engine across all platforms, which will in turn bring Android into more feature parity with other equivalent platforms. In the meantime, the current Android audio engine support wouldn’t be able to support the Oculus Audio plugin without significant work, and it would be questionable on whether or not it’d be performant enough for the device. Also, as an FYI, if you were to use the fMOD hack to get Gear VR to have specialized audio you would also need to acquire a license for fMOD as it is not free to use.

Documentation
The Learning Team has been making updates to all the Gear VR docs as new things come on line. However I must admit that during the time that I have been using Gear VR modifying .INI files has never come up. I will talk to W more about this so that I can better understand what Gear VR specific .INI settings there are and how to best use them and then document my findings.

As the staff here are passionate VR fans, I can assure you that we are working on these problems and all of your concerns relating to Gear VR have not fallen to the wayside. I know that this might not be the answers you are looking for, but we really appreciate your patience and are thankful for the feedback you have given.

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Thanks for finally giving us some feedback - transparency is always best even if it isn’t the shiny package we were hoping for :smiley:

One thing missing from your list is the distribution build bug - when exporting with Distribution build ticked the app crashes when starting it.

This is really a must have and very disappointing 4.8 did not have it already as the competitor engine does - I hope we get a github branch soon with it working and we don’t have to wait for 4.9 …

Does that mean it is already possible in 4.8 without code modification? Looking forward to seeing that …

Could you drop a quick note in this thread when it’s live? Saves a lot of pressure on our F5 keys :wink:

dam I guess it’s a while off then - thanks for the note about FMOD - as an approx ETA for spatialized audio on Android, is 4.9 realistic?

This is a really important feature actually - see the chart in the section “Fixed Clock Level API” in the Oculus doc: https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/mobilesdk/latest/concepts/mobile-power-overview/
Very important for a power hungry engine like UE4 - without this setting many of us struggle to keep 60FPS! Would be great to have it outside of ini files and in the gearvr plugin settings for example :wink:

Thanks, and looking forward to hearing your ETAs - fingers crossed the ETAs still make UE4 viable for the GearVR - the first commercially launched VR device, which for VR freaks like ourselves is already a great entrance and something we want to get in on while still on the ground floor! :wink:

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I must have missed this one when doing my R&D. Thanks for bringing it up and I will talk to W about it and see what we can do to get that sorted. If I have missed anything else please let me know. Ohh and yes I will make sure to update this thread when the global menu goes live.

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I appreciate the message. Thank you for staying in touch with us.

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I don’t really understand why it took a month to give us an update that basically says “we got nothin’ so far”. This post would have been much appreciated early June though, since the state was apparently the same…

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Exactly, not a lot more than what we already knew, unfortunately :-/

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With E3 coming and going I am quite sure they have been very busy with all aspects of the engine. Now that alot of these big shows and competitions are over I feel it is safe to assume that we will be seeing some more gear feedback in the near future.

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Thank you, . Appreciate the update.

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Thanks for the update Deiter! Appreciate you taking the time to lay this out, it at least gives us future prospects for using UE4.

-Peace

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Thanks for the update, . Epic has been silent for quite a while on this, and VR in general. Here’s hoping that GearVR support will be brought up to spec soon. I’d like to release Circumpaint to the Oculus store, but need most of these fixed before I can.

This implies that touchpad swiping works right now but its implementation is obscured, or hasn’t been figured out by the community yet. Has this been true since the first GearVR release? It is something we never got an answer to during, or following, the Jam. Any hints on how to do it without having to put together a whole Learning Resource?

Thanks!

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This Gear VR status update is much much appreciated, . Thanks!
Continuous communication - especially with the most passionate/vocal ones - is so crucial to building a strong developer community. Happy to read that attention is given, hopefully reflected in a solid 4.9 update.

There was a feature that I was missing in your post, though. -> Mobile HDR for Gear VR, but it seems that there’s some movement on that front as well.

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Mobile HDR never worked with Gear VR to begin with due to hardware limitations. However like you said there does seem to be some movement in that direction. When I know more I will make sure to update the relative documents and examples.

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Yes, I knew Mobile HDR never worked on Gear VR but hardware limitations you say? Could you elaborate on that?
I can see hardware being the reason for a certain part of Mobile HDR related features not working, but certainly not all. Basic post processing seems to work with fine in other engines. Or is there a work-around for PP effects like fog for Gear VR?

We very much look forward to those updates when you know more. Thanks again.

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Thanks for the update , but none of the answers allow me to make the informed decisions I need to because there is no indication as to when these things will be fixed. At the moment I’m just blindly hoping that you’ve got things covered and that’s not really a sensible way to plan for the future of my app. Despite your update I still feel like I’ve been left hanging. After investing so much time in Gear VR on UE4 it is really very frustrating. The release package 4.8.2 does not allow us to publish and sell our work and so is pretty unusable at the moment.

That said I spotted that had made this [https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine/commit/d12a40e61918b5771abc0cd21a4ba1bce16b5f90"]commit](https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine/commit/d12a40e61918b5771abc0cd21a4ba1bce16b5f90).

Does this mean the distribution build bug is fixed on master and that we can theoretically sell our VR apps now even if there’d be no AA or controller support?

If so that’s great and welcome progress! Is that fix likely to make it in to the next minor update - 4.8.3? I could do without building from source again but if there’s other fixes that I’ve missed in master too then I may well build from master again.

Also I spotted that appears to have departed from Epic and joined Envelop VR and so this goes some way to explaining the recent lack of progress. I think it would behove you guys to just come out and say ‘Yep, sorry guys we lost a key member of staff and that has slowed us down quite a bit. We’ve replaced/we’re in the process of replacing him and so things should improve for Gear VR within X months/weeks’ People get it that staff can leave and that this can affect progress, they don’t get it when there’s no real progress over three months and no explanation as to why that is.

So please can we get a new update with some idea as to when we’ll actually see progress on each of the issues outlined in this thread? Two weeks since your last update and two weeks is a long time in VR :slight_smile:

I eagerly await another update and it’d be even better if we could hear from too. I think a message from him saying ‘Don’t worry guys we’ll have you covered in plenty of time for the Consumer GearVR launch’ would calm some nerves here. It’d really do you guys some good here given the slightly bruised nature of the relationship that has come to develop between Epic and UE4 Gear VR developers.

Also I’d be very happy if you guys told me I didn’t need to bother waiting for this soon to be released 3rd party plugin for Google Cardboard because you’ve got it covered :slight_smile:

As I’ve said before mobile VR is where I think the market is going to be in the near term. I hope we start to see much better support and communication from Epic surrounding mobile VR in the future.

I think there’ll be far more mobile HMD’s out in the wild by the end of 2016 than the Rift, Morpheus and Vive combined. Longer term I expect this to change, but it’ll be low cost devices like these that switch masses on to VR initially:

Gameface
Lockheed’s Wearality - 140 degree field of view for $50
Cardboard suppliers like Knoxlabs
Homido

& of course Gear VR

Thanks for reading and sorry about being so grumpy yet again!

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wow how’d you spot that? Would also be interested to know more details and if that is why gearvr development slowed down … :wink:

Agree with this as well - which is why I asked alot of ETA related questions in the 1st reply above - without an ETA there is no plan - even if the ETA is only ballpark it would help us immensely …

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Anyone tried 4.9 Preview 1 yet to see if any of the GearVR fixes are in there?

able to give an update on 4.9 and the GearVR issues listed above since the release notes are not available yet?

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I am not actually sure because I have have been heads down working on making mobile deployment easier to understand for the last few weeks. If I get some time this week / weekend I can dig a bit further into it but this mobile stuff has me really busy ATM.

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I watched the VR twitch stream recently and you guys just seemed to be talking as if Gear VR was well supported on UE4.

Am I and others here missing something? Have all the issues mentioned in this thread been resolved? If not then UE4 on GearVR is still broken at the moment. please could you or someone else read my last post in this thread and address some of the concerns I raised there?

It’d be really great to hear if the new unified controller stuff you guys have mentioned is going to carry over to Android and solve our controller issues on mobile at least :slight_smile:

Also MSAA!?! - I still don’t think we can deploy to Lollipop with any kind of AA. My app relies on the 's 4.7 fork with MSAA hack which does not work on Lollipop. Despite being very grateful to for sorting out the fork in time for the Jam, I don’t really want to be using a non-official fork going forward. I know that J.J. said AA on mobile with support for KitKat and Lollipop was his top priority before he left Epic. I wonder if this very important issue has fallen through the cracks?

I know I’m banging on again and you’re probably fed up of hearing from me by now. But “If I get some time this week” doesn’t fill me with vast amounts of confidence that you guys are going to have things ready in time for the consumer launch of Gear VR.

Aside from my Museum app I now have the opportunity to use a modified version of it for a big installation project. I’m reluctant to say I can do it using UE4 because others would be relying on me to deliver. How can I say yes when I’m not even confident I’ll have controller support, never mind MSAA? Please, please, give us some information, some dates (even ballpark) and some peace of mind!

Thanks for reading and sorry about being so grumpy yet again!

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I attempted to try 4.9 Preview 1 and GearVR however ran into the following problem: Unreal Engine 4.9 Preview - Announcements and Releases - Unreal Engine Forums

anyone else getting that?

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I’m kind of giving up my developments on gear VR and DK2 with UE4 for the moment. Too many issues of all kinds, lately I’ve spent more time doing troubleshooting than actual development, and there is no solution in view for the MSAA issue, which is really hindering the graphic quality on Lollipop.