Doing a Large touch wall the UE 5 way

Hey,

I’m a creative coder doing interactive work for more than 10y mostly large touchscreen projects.
Have been using libcinder & openframeworks for this in the past but going to give UE5 a try.
Here’s an example of an project which I will try recreate in UE https://www.lab101.be/work/momu-explorer/

Since UE is very 3D focussed I was wondering what I should use within UE for realizing this type of project?
Any one can give me some pointers on what to learn first.

Thx

Hi Leparidop,

I love the cursor/crosshair on the website you linked. Such elegance.

If you’re outputting to many connected displays definitely look into nDisplay , but it may also be possible to output at a non-standard resolution and let some intermediate handle it.

I could be wrong but it looks like UE has support for 10 simultaneous touch events. (Touch 1-10 input in Blueprints)

With a multi-touchscreen setup I’d be curious to know if dragging from one screen to the next is possible.

The concept of having these 2D images ‘floating’ is interesting. You can disable gravity + enable physics on objects and then lock them to a specific axis/plane.

Specifically as to “What to learn first?” : Blueprints! Having a Blueprint Actor that you can fire a touch input on might be step zero!

Hope that helps!

Hey @Astrotronic

Thx for the feedback!
In our last setup with 8 screens we used nvidia mosaic to combine 2 x 4K output as one desktop so our app could go fullscreen. Than we split the two 4k outputs in 8 screens using two FX datapath hdmi splitters. As for the touch I’m sure it will be fine.

It’s the part of loading all the data from the disk and internet and then rendering the rich text and images on screen that is a bit of mystery now.
On my to learn list now

  • check how I can use c++ for all the logic. I have a good background in C++ so I think it’s faster to work with than blueprints. Maybe learn blueprints for the UI stuff.
  • I started looking at UMG for rendering richt text but I’m not sure if it’s very flexible to use it as material and mask the text and other fancy stuff.
  • Als came across paper2d maybe that’s interesting for putting a lot of images on screen.

That’s what I mean with what to learn first. There are many concepts within the engine which take time to learn so want to start with the concepts that apply for may project.

Thx
Kris

You’re welcome. That setup sounds cool, I’m just over here plugging in some extra monitors to 1 GPU :wink:

My general approach would be to develop with BPs and then refactor into C++ if more performance is needed. (That being said, I have no background with C++) Here’s a good video that compares the two.

UMG might be best way to easily render text. (Check out 3D widget components) Alternatively there is the TextRender actor/component that can be fed new fonts. Probably out of scope but there’s also a cool 3D Text plugin that comes with the engine. (Disabled by default)

In my mind paper2d is more for working with spritesheets. I’m not sure if it’s ‘finished’ but it feels to me like a system that is not being actively worked on.

Looking forward to seeing how this progresses!

Thx for all the feedback appreciate it.

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