Firsthand experience with this… out of the box the plugin does not package properly to the Note 4 and so the app will crash at start up on the GearVR because the plugin isn’t included in the apk. So after following Opamp’s guide here and then his followup on packaging the plugins here, which works for desktop packaging, the next step to solving this is to contact FMOD support and to request a modification to the UEDeployAndroid.cs file in the UE4 source code which they describe as necessary within the FMOD Integration CHM Documentation in the UE4 Help menu dropdown under the section within the CHM on Deployment.
From my communication with FMOD support after doing this, “The windows version of the FMOD integration already has the Android .so files and the .jar file, but there needs to be a modification of UE4 in order to correctly package them up. I’ve been in contact with Epic and they are improving plugin loading for 4.8, but the workaround is to modify UEDeployAndroid.cs and built the UBT build executable. I have attached the code to add in the “android_uedeployment.txt” file…,” which then goes into detail where and how to insert the code.
Unfortunately the email they sent did not include the attachment with the code inside of it, either because it was inadvertently not sent or because Gmail blocked and removed the file before sending it to me. I requested on Friday morning that they resend the attachment to a different email address, yet have not heard back at this time and imagine that I won’t until after the weekend. Just for context since you said, “budget around a day to integrate this,” I sent my initial request on Monday morning of this last week and received the first response on Thursday morning. Having started this integration process myself with this thread here almost two weeks ago, I’ll admit to being a bit frustrated by it and have considered dropping FMOD altogether several times, mainly because the process has been so convoluted and not documented very well, or not documented at all actually. All of this was discovered from piecing together clues, trial and error and reading between the lines, mostly from Opamp’s threads, without which we would all be completely lost.
Because there is one more thing… though the process above will allow FMOD itself to deploy to Android, the actual Oculus Spatializer plugin is not included within the FMOD Plugin itself (the 64-bit and 32-bit .dll versions are), and according to my understanding of the FMOD and Oculus Audio SDK documentation, along with Opamp’s packaging directions on the OculusVR forum, the libovrfmod32.so file included within the Oculus Audio SDK from the Plugins>FMOD>android directory needs to be manually placed somewhere, either within the UE4 engine, the Android NDK -and/or- within the apk directly after packaging, just like the .dll plugins require doing for PC packaging.
When I explained my situation with deploying the Oculus Spatializer to the GearVR and asked FMOD support about where the libovrfmod32.so should go or if it needs including, their response was, “I’ll get back to you regarding loading plugins via Android. The main issue is getting them in the right place so they are packaged up properly during the Android build process.”
In the recent Mobile VR AMA on reddit, Chris from Oculus looked into my question as to where this should be placed and said the following, “I spoke to somebody on the UE4 team who suggested that you but .so files at Engine/Build/Android/Java/libs/armeabi-v7a. If you have trouble, check out UEDeployAndroid.cs.”
All a bit circular, even being linked back to this thread both by Oculus there and by FMOD Support in one of their emails, yet still moving forward… so once I get the code from the new attachment from FMOD support, I am going to insert the code into my own modification of the UE4 source as posted in the following thread here, and then will place the libovrmod32.so file at Engine/Build/Android/Java/libs/armeabi-v7a within the source directory, then package to the Note 4 and see if it works on the GearVR. If not, then I will follow Opamp’s packaging suggestion to manually place the plugin into the apk after it has been packaged and see if that works.
If it all works, woo-hoo! If not, then I’m canning FMOD, because yeah.
I hope this helps clarify your decision (or anyone else’s) and wasn’t too long-winded. Lately I’ve kind of adopted the mantra, “It’s complicated.”
