Has anyone else managed to get Niagara to render correctly in VR with instanced stereo ON?
When stereo is turned ON, the particles render incorrectly (flickering) like each eye is a different position…
This issue has been happening (in different forms) since 4.21 and is still here in 4.23.
It makes using Niagara impossible in VR, since we can’t afford to turn off instanced stereo… which is a real shame given the possibilities it could open.
I found one issue in the database but it’s been marked as cannot reproduce which is weird since it seems that many of us are having that problem still
I’ve entered a new bug report and waiting to hear from QA, but if you’ve had any luck getting it to work please let me know
I’m really surprised this of all things is still not working considering it’s been out sometime and is a pretty big feature upgrade. VR is now starting to take off with the new headsets being released but it’s looking like epic are kind of neglecting it since the last year or so.
There’s now a bunch of new stuff that’s broken in vr!
There’s also the new ‘Sky Atmosphere’ system, it renders perfectly in one eye, but through the other eye it appears as if the sun is lighting the atmosphere from a significantly different angle. The new clouds etc. are really beautiful features but I hope the developers will see them through to being functional in VR before calling them done and moving on to other new features.
I’ve found that 4.26 has been a big step backwards for VR compatibility. I get unacceptable performance loss from using the new water or sky assets, and not only that, but general performance loss across the board. Furthermore, the instanced stereo feature is broken; some objects and materials (mostly translucent materials) only render in one eye.
Replying, because I just hit this issue and it’s quite depressing that something that should have been solved for 4.24 is still an issue in 2021. Specially as my future game MUST make use of Instanced Stereo.
I think for now, epic does not care about VR, because the market is so small compare to other platform. And ofcourse, the new sky and water are too heavy for rendering in vr. But im supprise that they leave the bug with instance stereo and translucency since the beginning to 4.26.
If Half-Life: Alyx proved anything, it’s that the market for VR is only “small” because there’s not enough content. HMD sales exploded, the hype was real, and then interest promptly lulled again when everyone finished it and found there was nothing else to play. Unfortunately it’s pretty hard to create new content when tools like Unreal don’t support the platform. This is so frustrating.
Epic do such great stuff but sometimes really let you down like with vr right now. There’s all sorts of performance and issues in general that’s making it difficult to use.
Small market place, its not about content, but how many people that have vr device. Alyx is a very special one that it have a very very large fanbase, they are ready to purchase the game even they dont have vr headset. And they can mod the game to play like a pc version. Like i said, the market place for vr is so small compare to other platform, so why do epic need to bother with it. Surely the engine will get some updates about vr development, but it will be like at the bottom prioty.
Epic also invested in VR in the early days (though possibly only because of Facebook money) with the development of RoboRecall. With Fortnite, they have a money printing press - not everything they do has to immediately be a huge cash success. But with Fortnite’s gameplay incompatible for VR, it seems they have very little interest in maintaining the engine in this regard, and developing new content for the platform.
If not for gaming, I hope that at least the enterprise market can trigger Epic’s interest in keeping VR fully supported in Unreal.
Epic only seems to make improvements or keep things working properly if it’s important enough or they’re paid for a big project. That’s why vr has been neglected over the last two or so years. There’s no current major projects involving vr and so no reason for them to check if things break or make any improvements.
None of the newest features are likely to run well in vr anyway so that’s just another reason for not bothering to make them at least appear correctly.
I’ve been going other some older projects and it looks like even basic transparency or reflections aren’t working in stereo any more?
There’s also some weirdness going on with rtx 3000 cards with massive fps spikes and latency issues in projects which were fine before. After exiting a vr test the editor has major slowdowns for a a minute or so.