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Lumen GI + VR (SteamVR)

Development Discussion Unreal Engine 5 Early Access
#1

Hi everyone,

I tried to find other posts regarding this, but I didn’t really find much. I’ve tried creating a VR scene from scratch, just dragging in some assets to see how Lumen lights.
While doing so I’ve set everything to use Lumen. hoping that it would work with SteamVR.
The preview in the editor looks nice, but it seems that in the actual VR preview, the GI pass is actually being skipped, as all the bounce light is missing from the scene.
VR:

VR_view
VR_view1255×718 586 KB

Editor (GI on):

editor_view
editor_view1555×776 148 KB

This also lines up with the preview in the Editor with GI being turned off.
Editor (GI off):

GI_off
GI_off1778×812 157 KB

It would be great to know if there is a fix or if it’s at least the plan for Lumen GI to eventually come to VR in UE5.

It’s the feature I’ve been looking forward to the most!

Thanks,
Andreas

#2

Lumen and Nanite don’t support VR (yet).

It is highly recommended to create your VR project using the VRTemplate in UE5, because the project settings and plugins are already configured for the best VR experience. If you create a VR project in UE5 Early Access, you must disable Lumen by setting Project Settings > Rendering > Global Illumination to None. Lumen is an Engine Default in UE5 and is not currently supported on XR platforms.

It was stated however that they should at some point later.

#3

Thanks for your reply.

That’s a shame, I’ve heard that nanite isn’t supported, but according to yesterdays livestream Lumen + VR should work… so I was hoping for the best ^^

Welcome To Unreal Engine 5 Early Access | Inside Unreal

#4

Yes, I know, I watched it too, and I was surprised by the answer given to this question, as it is something I already investigated.

But unless there is a special way to make it work with VR I don’t know of, other sources state Lumen (and Nanite) don’t support VR for the time being :frowning:

#5

Maybe (hoping) it’s in the works. Watched the stream as well so spend a few hours today trying to get lumen work in vr.

#6

Yeah… it’s a shame, but since they also mentioned that nanite will be coming eventually, and that he assumed that Lumen is already in there, sounds like it’s definitely going to work eventually :slight_smile:

#7

yesterdays show (june 10) revealed lumen is not coming to VR at all. Two highrez screens + high framerate makes it impossible. Too bad.

#8

Link at timestamp : https://youtu.be/QdV_e-U7_pQ?t=4353

#9

It seems to be a technical issue that may challenge the way nanite and lumen have been setup. I would imagine that VR would require some very specific solutions too. Foveated rendering combined with a form of ‘Foveated’ Virtualized Everything (Texture, Mesh [nanite], Lumen [Shadow Maps etc] or something. In order to get perf where it needs to be with VR, it likely needs to be constructed from the ground up, but idk. If I were a skilled programmer, I’d build it and let EPIC buy me out. LOL Gotta have eye tracking for the foveate stuff to work too and that’s very platform specific rn.