Feedback on the new docs site

Hi msdfal63, thanks for the feedback! You are correct, the image was an error. The right image was already in the database, just needed to swap it in.

Hi DominikKowalczyk, thanks for spotting that. I fixed it immediately.

Here’s an occurrence in Opera GX LVL2 (core: 73.0.3856.438)


Monitor resolution is, again, 2560x1600. Out of that, the web browser window is 1279x1559. The content area is 1237x1478
In this case, re-loading the page actually did fix the issue. However, opening a new docs page in a new tab reproduced the issue. Opening subsequent pages in new tabs did not reproduce the issue.
(This really is an inconsistent one)
If you have any instructions for what you want me to do when it happens to collect info or whatever, I’ll gladly try it and get back to you.

Thanks, @DocMont. I could ask nothing more than that you’re listening. :+1:

As I’ve continued to use the docs, I’ve run across a couple of other topics that were unclear to me, so I’ll pass those along here.

World Composition

In the section on World Composition, I struggled for many hours with trying to add sublevels after I had my persistent level created and showing in the Levels window. I kept trying to reproduce the steps in the documentation and in several online video tutorials (both official and community-made). Nothing seemed to work. I had very carefully made sure the persistent level had no existing sublevels because of the warning the editor gives when first enabling World Composition. I would drop another existing level into the Levels window, or onto the persistent level, but never got it to add as a sublevel.

Finally I learned by accident what I had been missing, and what I think should be added to the docs: Sublevels need to be in the same directory as their parent level, or in a descendant under that directory. As far as I can tell, that’s not mentioned in the docs, and the online tutorials seem to take it for granted that everyone knows this. The warning from the editor is what threw me – I had intentionally put my intended sublevels in different directories because I interpreted the warning as “don’t have anything around that can confuse the initial World Composition setup; instead, set up a single level and then use the Levels window to add the others later, as in the tutorials.”

The effect of dropping a Level onto the current persistent level in the Levels window is not obvious from experimenting in the editor, so it may be worth describing that behavior in the docs as well.

Now that I have figured this out, it all makes perfect sense, of course. :smiley: This fits the old adage that “It’s easier to understand the documentation after you’ve learned the software.”

Origin Rebasing

The topic of origin rebasing is familiar to me from other engines, and I understand the floating point precision issue’s causes and effects, and also why we can’t simply use double-precision floating point to make it all go away. I don’t know how to implement this in Unreal Engine, however. It’s mentioned in the documentation, but seemingly only in passing. That’s sad because Unreal appears to be way ahead of most other engines in this feature – something that is hard to do in many engines but very well-supported in Unreal.

I recognize that documentation is always a work-in-progress and never finished, so I’m not upset that a niche topic like this isn’t covered in detail yet. Please simply count my feedback as one asking for this task to be on the to-do list in the near term.

Unreal World Coordinates

The section defining and comparing coordinate systems (local, world, texture, etc.) is extremely useful and something that would have been very easy to take for granted. The one very small addition I would recommend is to explain the customary use of the Cartesian axes in Unreal, with respect to object directionality and cardinal directions.

It’s fairly obvious that +Z is “up” and -Z is “down”, but please consider defining the conventions for “left”, “right”, “forward”, and “backward”. Also, when making landscapes, which axis is traditionally used as “north”?

The concepts of right-handed and left-handed coordinate systems might be worth mentioning as well, since that can profoundly impact import of 3D models.

As before, thanks for listening. I realize at least some of what I’ve suggested here would be a significant effort, but hopefully there are also some easy wins as well.

Have a great day!

[=“syscrusher, post:790, topic:126746”]
Finally I learned by accident what I had been missing, and what I think should be added to the docs: Sublevels need to be in the same directory as their parent level, or in a descendant under that directory. As far as I can tell, that’s not mentioned in the docs, and the online tutorials seem to take it for granted that everyone knows this.
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In the first paragraph of the world composition documentation, while it doesn’t explicitly say “all sublevels need to be in the same folder as the persistent level”, it does say it scans the folder of the persistent level to find all other levels:

The persistent level does not store any streaming information and instead scans a folder and treats all found levels as streaming levels. Each streaming level has information stored in the package header, which World Composition can read without loading the level into memory.

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I’d like to suggest a minor edit. In the section “Using Cameras”, the following description is, well, a bit awkward:

“Activation: Determines whether or not the Camera is automatically enabled or not.”

[HUMOR MODE] Of course, it’s entirely up to you whether or not you change this or not. :smiley:

That’s a fair point, and reading it now it’s perfectly clear to me. The popup warning about making sure there were no sublevels was what threw me off, I think. Between the two sections, what I thought (incorrectly) was happening is that there have to be no sublevels as you are first enabling World Composition, but that it was valid to add them later.

Since the tutorials I found demonstrate adding sublevels from the Levels window, not in the Content Manager, I was expecting to add an existing or new level solely from the Levels window and that the editor would be managing the subfolder tree that you cite in your reply.

You are absolutely correct, of course, as is the documentation itself. I made a newbie mistake because I misunderstood what I was reading. I mentioned the situation here for precisely that reason – to show where and how I went wrong as a “new user data point” for the docs team. They’re Unreal experts, so it’s probably hard for them to envision all the ways a newcomer can go astray. :smiley:

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Update on my post about the coordinate system and cardinal/relative directions (“front”, “back”, “north”, and so on):

I found that this is documented, just not in that section. It’s very clearly explained in the sections about importing Static Meshes and Skeletal Meshes from FBX files. Perhaps all that is needed is a link from the general intro to Unreal coordinate spaces.

The FBX import sections are well written, by the way. I had reviewed those previously, but I returned to them in depth yesterday to resolve some mesh import issues. The descriptions of file requirements, best practices, and intra-file entity mapping from FBX to Unreal semantics were easily comprehensible and coherently organized.

Hello sonictimm,

Thank you for following up with your additional information. We have an internal Jira logged, and our teams are investigating. I can confirm having experienced this inconsistent behavior myself. We apologize for the inconvenience. I will follow up as soon as more information becomes available, however, if you do notice any additional behaviors or steps that lead to more consistent reproduction, please follow up with us.

We are continually watching this thread for feedback.
Thank you!

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Thank you for that Angus. :+1:

Good morning, Docs Team. I have a very small UX suggestion to offer. In Chrome on Windows (at least; I haven’t tested this in other browsers), the boundary between the ToC frame and the main content frame changes the cursor as if it should be moveable left or right, but I can’t actually move it.

For those of us with 4K screens, or for people who have an ultrawide screen, it would be useful to make the ToC wide enough to avoid truncating section headings. Conversely, this might be a useful feature for someone on an ultralight netbook with a sub-1080p screen size, or on a tablet device in portrait orientation, to make the ToC narrower.

It’s a small issue, and obviously not urgent priority, but please consider this enhancement if and when your time permits. :slight_smile:

This need updating as when I tried using NDK r20b while trying to launch to an Android device in UE4.26.2 I received an error stating that r20b was NOT supported and only versions greater than r20b are supported (r21b recomended). The documentation states that r20b is supported to fix compatibility issues with older devices.

The first video on this page:

plays music and has no volume control to either reduce the volume or mute it.

Also you should consider moving away from flash.

If I [try to] move my mouse pointer over the left pane (the table of contents/bookmarks), the pointer immediately jumps to the little “have feedback?” chat icon/bubble. Using Windows 10, latest Chrome browser, and the page I encountered this on was Audio | Unreal Engine Documentation

Oddly enough, however, after going to this page and signing in here, I am no longer seeing this happening. :man_shrugging:

Hi Ubara-tutu, you are quite correct, that needs fixed. I will make sure the docs team looks into this.

Hi jon4iffy.page, thanks for pointing out that typo. It should be corrected the next time we publish content.

Hello CanadianCheesus, thanks for the feedback. The page you reference was last updated for 4.25, so it’s not surprising that there are changes for 4.26. I will add this to the docs team’s issue list.

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The docs about using CoreRedirects with plugins seems to be wrong and is very confusing:

Core Redirects should be configured in your project’s DefaultEngine.ini file, or, in the case of a Plugin, the prefixed, self-named .ini file for that Plugin (for example, BasePaper2D.ini for the Engine’s Paper2D Plugin, or DefaultGamePluginName.ini for a game Plugin)
Core Redirects in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.3 Documentation

In my testing, the ini file for the plugin actually had to be called Default<PluginName>.ini in order to be loaded. Both Base<PluginName>.ini and DefaultGame<PluginName>.ini refused to load and so I had to step through with the debugger to find the right name to use.

As a general piece of feedback on the docs, there is no information really on how to add config files to plugins. The page about config files only talks about project configs.

Hey there, I noticed this missing link here:

There is a missing markdown link like this: []()