So far I’m doing well, keeping an eye on FPS counter pretty much trying to make sure it stays around 120fps in the view port/ work space. I have a chess set that has 61 773 vertices. (polygon model). When I import it to unreal engine to my scene, when I view it FPS drops from 120 average to 70/ 80 fps average.
Question is:
Is the chess set too detailed? Too many faces/vertices?
Would something other than Polygons work better? (I mainly like to model with Polygons so I’m hoping it’s not this).
I’m not entirely sure how this alone can be causing such a frame drop. That would limit me so much and would mean it’s impossible to build complex scenes. So there has to be a trick to this? Any input would be appreciated!
Use normal map for such stuff, keep the polycount low as possible for VR.
I am sure you do not need so much geometrical details, it can be baked to a normal map
Here some info http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_map
With one word of caution regarding normal maps. In VR you can look at objects from very low angles, in this case normal maps don’t provide a good looking result and the surface will look totally flat. In VR normal maps are good only for small inner details and for objects seen from far. For the rest you are better off with real geometry (the right amount) and with some level of tessellation + displacement maps.
Thank you for all the replies! In regard to QuadArt, I understand using normal map would work much better, but the chess pieces do not have any texture anyway, just using black and white lambert materials. I suppose if I’d model the pieces extremely basic and then using textures to create depth (for example the horses head), it would save on resources.
In regard to vr_macro, this is my concern yes. I made the pieces so that you can actually interact with them, pick up and physics. So the person in VR would be able to view it up close. Thus from the start I modelled the pieces with geometric details rather than using normal/bump mapping.
And I have not yet looked at the stats, no. I should. I’m just surprised how easy it is to impact performance. I got my whole scene to run around 120fps in the work area so far. Then adding the chess set makes it drop by 40/50 frames (when looking at it.) I suppose I should try launching the game, as many people said it can make a difference in performance. What is it that makes Virtual Reality so demanding? Can play/run games/demos on 4K no problem. But add a simple chess set to VR on the Unreal Engine (which I always believed to be a very well optimized engine) and it all goes down. For interest sake, I run the computer on two 4K monitors, that could not in any way effect VR can it? As the GPU should be rendering directly to VR when using VR, I think anyway?