I’ve already made a post about the lack of documentation on this here, but it looks as though support for this has been 100% removed without so much as a whisper in the release notes.
I’ve spent all of my working day downloading & Installing UE 4.8 from source (Release Branch) so that I can enable the Desktop Renderer on our Shield Tegra-K1 Tablets. This is something we desperately need for our game (it’s a very specific installation), and it seemed relatively straightforward. I have followed this (unofficial) guide, as unfortunately it seems to be the only one of it’s kind in existence.
First of all, I wasn’t presented with a Tegra-Android option when I built the Engine. A quick forum searched led me to this post, which led me to believe that that would be fine. I therefore built the Engine and have since distributed it to all team mates.
Unfortunately, I still don’t have the option to package any game (even one of the example ones) for Android OpenGL ES3.1 and AEP. I did another forum search which brought me to this - which is from way back in October 2014.
Now the problem is, in 4.7 that line in PlatformInfo.cpp still exists. In 4.8, it’s GONE. I can only assume that means that OpenGL ES3.1 is no longer supported at all. It’s not in Master, Promoted or Release, nor 4.8. However, it was in 4.7. I haven’t tried just putting the line back in for the sake of it, but I don’t really want to waste anymore time recompiling and distributing the engine again unless it’s going to work.
There is quite literally zero documentation on this (or if there is it’s hidden behind some very obscure search filters). Are there any official instructions I can follow to get this working, and if not can I pls have some?
Sorry for the whinge, but downloading, building and distributing isn’t a quick process!
So I just found this, does this mean that I am in fact building for ES3.1 when the box is checked? Perhaps I can stop panicking about a rebuild…
Edit: Well don’t I feel stupid… Release Notes for 4.8:
New: Changed the ES31 w/ Android Extension Pack support from a separate TargetPlatform to being a project setting that can work with any texture format target. It is now driven by the build flag that was compiling in support for ES31 - if that is checked, it will also compile the AEP shaders as well as ES2 shaders.
Does this also mean I don’t need the Source Version of the Engine anymore?
Hey, did you get anywhere with this? I just got a Nexus 6P which I think would be capable of running an ES3 build. Can’t even find out what branch I’d need to download if I have to use a source version (really wish it was an option from the launcher, or atleast a plugin / experimental feature).
Best bet is to grab the ‘Release’ branch from GitHub and follow the instructions for enabling ES3.1. It’s still kind of annoying that Source is required, I’m hoping that changes in an upcoming build.
Went through all the build steps, except on the final build stage I chose Android rather than Android-Tegra. There were still lots of lines in the output log mentioning ES3.1 so I assume that was all correct (never had to manually build an engine before - I’m an artist, not a coder).
In the editor, the normally greyed out options for Android are available, and allow ES3.1 build was already checked - however, it is not listed in the project export list. I enabled the high end mobile preview in experimental features, but in the test scene I set up, found that a material set to full metallic would appear black, apart from specular highlights.
I’m obviously somewhere on the right track, but not there yet
It seems insane to me that in order to try this feature, I had to download VS, then wait for all the project files to generate (tip for anyone who has a problem here: VS 2015 Community doesn’t install the C++ files with a default install, you have to do a custom one and enable them - if you’ve already installed, run the web downloader again and you can modify the installed components), wait hours for the various builds.
EDIT: Just read your previous posts properly and it seems I’ve gone through the same process and frustration as you. So it will still build for ES3.1 using the regular build/deploy settings?
