Has anyone written a VR plugin for UE4, similar to the SteamVR/GearVR/OculusVR plugins, except instead of communicating with actual VR hardware, it just creates a fake software-emulated HMD + 2 motion controllers that the player can control via keyboard/mouse?
I’m thinking with the plugin enabled, it would allow you to run the editor in VR mode. The game would render in stereo view as it does with Vive/Oculus. The plugin would provide a virtual HMD transform + motion controller transforms in room scale. The motion controllers would just be in front of the HMD to the left and right, so they’re always easily visible in the HMD’s looking direction. The plugin would allow the real player to slide their virtual VR player around in virtual roomscale using W/A/S/D for locomotion and mouse movement for looking around, and adjust the virtual player’s height with CTRL/SPACE. It would also allow mapping keyboard input to basic motion controller buttons.
“Why on earth would anyone want this?” you ask? Well, I work for a VR company and occasionally get the opportunity to work from home, or need to do some quick development from a remote location. Often I don’t have a VR headset with me, which makes testing VR stuff in UE4 difficult. I’d guess about 60-80% of my VR development work would be doable in 2D using this plugin. Obvious exceptions being anything that requires fine spatial tuning in 3D, or fine motor control that only motion controllers in 3D can offer, but for a large chunk of the work, eg. level scripting, testing gameplay flow, pushing buttons, picking up objects and moving them etc., this plugin would totally do the job for me (and save me from “riftface” a lot of the time at work).
This plugin would also allow people who can’t afford any VR hardware to play around with UE4’s VR functionality.
I don’t imagine it would be a complicated plugin to write. Anyone heard of something like this?
