Thanks for documenting the whole Gear VR thing and thanks for making a Twitch broadcast!
I really really wanted to take this as a positive signal - But how much time had Sam to prepare himself? He answered so many questions wrong that we now have a lot of myths out there. I wanted to post again when there is time to do some backslapping for the progress. I did not want to come here and cry around again, but I think the Q&A round in this stream was really contraproductive.
Looks like Sam did not even had time to read the Gear VR manual and Oculus Mobile SDK documentation, questions scratching the surface were answered with hearsay and superficial knowledge =(
Some examples from memory:
- Sam said something about it packages after executing the install script, but actually it installs the package.
- Guy asked about the look trough camera - He answered he has to look it up but should work, while is not really a good thing to do. Error: Not supported at all without a lot of hacking of the android java Template and the jni interface.
- Someone asked about the frames per seconds in the FPS Template and Sam answered about 30 FPS as if it was totally ok. - Sam did not even read the forum entries about the Gear VR performance problems and the other problems at all. Maybe he did not even know about the high frame rate requirements of VR at all?
- Another user asked about the Samsung Gamepad and MOGA Pro compatibility. - Sam had no clue and has never heared about a word like “MOGA Pro” (maybe the most widespread Android Bluetooth Gamepad)… And no this compatibility is not solved, the code still does not support the default Samsung Gamepad, in fact nothing has changed!
- Sam told that the “button” on top of the Gear VR would change the IPD - Actually it changes the distance from lens to screen, to adjust the sharpnes for moderate near- and farsightedness. The IPD has to be changed in Software.
- Sam explained you have to take the Note 4 out of the Gear VR and put it back in physically to install your application and you need to repeat this over and over again - That’s simply not true, the Oculus_Mobile_v0.5.0_SDK_Documentation.pdf describes how to do it via WiFi as the prefered way on page 75-76, if you set this up the script will install via WiFi without any problems. After that you can start the application via adb shell am start -n [Package]/[Activity]
- … At this point (~25min) I stopped watching the video, because this proofed Sam did not read the docs and the rest of the time will go on and on like this (I hope I am wrong).
It is great that we will have Gear VR documentation soon. But if the documentation is as inaccurate as the Q&A session here, then it will make a lot of peoples time harder instead of easier.
Also I believe there was no coding work done on Gear VR Problems since January, since there is no movement in git on these topics. All the problems from my initial post are still in place. Yes there is a template now, but it is only running 60FPS thanks to it’s ultra basic graphics without the absolutely mandatory 2xAA.
I am maybe the biggest fan of the whole UE4+GearVR idea, think alone about the educational VR experiences that Matinee enables. But I am sad as I have to conclude: At this point in time I see no way UE4 could be used for the Oculus VR Jam this month or any commercial Gear VR Applikation any time soon. I also see no intends to have a schedule for solving the problems, the only progress is in documentation (what is good, if it were not the only progress). Actually it looks like Morpheus performance is maximum priority instead, when I look at the commits.
If I am wrong, please let me know, because there is nothing I’d like to hear more. Tell me you are working with 1-3 Devs on the technical Gear VR problems on a daily basis and you made my day.
@Sam: I know you had a tight time schedule and you are no dev, so it is not you to blame. A developer who is actively working on the Gear VR implementation should have been at your side for this Q&A. But there were other priorities obviously. That’s company politics sigh