First off, forgive me as I am fairly new with development and VR.
The problem that I am trying to solve is that I have a game that is fully developed and playable. It was originally made to be played on a computer and not VR. It was developed using UE4.10. What are my options for making it compatible with the Oculus Rift? Is it as simple as plug and play since it was developed with UE4? Is there an API I can take advantage of in order to make the necessary changes? Do I need to learn everything there is about VR and UE4 development? Also, I am trying to accomplish this before March comes around. Any pointers, solutions, links, etc are very much appreciated. Thank you!
Be forewarned that attempting to make a finished non-VR game support VR has a high probability of leading to a poor VR experience. That’s not to say it can’t be done but for it to be done correctly will take a significant amount of work. Most of this is all dependent on your existing gameplay and game design. Without knowing anything about it, it’s hard to truly say what the work effort is. I would suggest starting with the VR best practices guide in the wiki.
If you have a 2D UI, you will need to create an all new 3D UI for VR (not fixed on player camera). If you made a realistic game but wasn’t careful to ensure every asset was the correct scale, you’re going to have your work cut out for you. This is especially a concern if you made a third-person game where its common in the industry to make rooms larger than they really are to accommodate the camera distance and height. One of the most important things is going to be performance. Just because your game runs fine without an HMD doesn’t mean it can handle being ran in VR mode at the minimum 90FPS @ 2160x1200. Even if you can hit that framerate at that resolution on your monitor doesn’t mean you will in VR mode due to the roughly 40% performance loss from rendering in stereo.
Sorry to be mainly negative but trying to cram in last minute VR support into a finished game without any experience in the platform is a high-risk move, not just for yourself but other developers releasing a VR supported title because poor VR games and experiences this early in the technologies lifecycle can have a huge negative impact to consumer perception.
My recommendation, hold off on adding full VR support and start smaller with an experimental VR option. Maybe a mini-game or smaller subset of your game and clearly communicate that the support is still experimental and as you learn what makes a good VR experience, continue to expand upon that. In the meantime, Epic has posted some great Twitch streams on getting started with VR. The Oculus forums are a great source of VR related advice - most is either generic or specific to Unity but the info is still relevant. Also, if you dont have access to an HMD, get one and play as many VR titles as you can to figure out what does and doesnt work.
ChungDung, Virtual Reality is so much more than “display on a HMD”. Please have a look at Oculus’ Best Practice Guide. This should give you a good start about the dos and don’ts for VR development. Then, sit back and evaluate what parts of your game will not work in VR and remove them or substitute them with something VR compatible. Think about if your game is suited for VR at all, too.
Thank you both for your input! So to answer a few questions:
The game is not third person, it is first person.
It is not a high-octane action game, it is quite tame, more of a simulation than a game I suppose.
I’ve checked things with the Oculus Rift on, and everything seems to scale just fine.
I do have a VR headset, I’ve got the DK2. I wish I could try out a bunch of different games, but unfortunately, I don’t think that will fly haha. My supervisor may not believe that it is all in the interest of seeing the capabilities that are out there.
I am currently doing an evaluation looking at what all will go into making this game acceptable for VR, both in time and effort.
Again, thank you both for your input. I do still want to try and tackle this project. Just using the Oculus Rift with the current game adds a nice level of realism. And don’t worry, I’m not trying to sabotage the VR experience by releasing a crappy game.
I honestly can’t wait for VR products to be easily available. I finally went to my 1st CES 2 weeks ago and theres a bunch of cool VR headsets heading our way this year.
One of the big ones I tested was the 3Glasses D2. They’re supposed to be shipping to North America this year for $399. SO much cheaper than the other ones I tried. Still has a great latency, FOV and refresh rate. I spoke with them for a few minutes when I was there … apparently they have a standalone headset coming out later this year too. (Saweet!). Anyways - they were my biggest surprise from CES. Definitely one to keep on your radars.
I also checked out some of the bigger named-VR sets at the show (Oculus, Samsung Gear, HTC Vive). There were a few glitches (as expected with young tech), but there’s some really good stuff coming out to look out for. Great English content too - gaming and videos.
I also heard about Deepoon - a Chinese knock off of Oculus. Apparently they’re trying to use Oculus’ content on their VR headsets and sell for less. Cool idea, but there’s got to be some issues with intellectual property/compatibility. No objection Oculus? It’s an interesting convo about innovation vs. straight up copying successful competitors.
Anyways - can’t wait to see how the industry changes this year as products/content actually enter the market. Think it will become mainstream? #hereshoping
Alright, so I think i figured out a sort of work around to my problem. My game, for the most part, works with Oculus Rift. One of the major things that is off that I need to fix is the HUD. I was thinking about using the current drawing methods and everything, but just adding a simple conditional, like" if HMD is enabled, draw the HUD components this way, vs. draw them the the normal way. And then i would just shrink things down a little bit on the HUG and then move them in closer to center of the screen so that they can be seen through the HMD, because currently all of the HUD components are not within view while wearing the HMD. I know this is a crude solution, but does anyone know if there is something that will completely prevent me from doing this or if anyone has a better idea, I am all ears.
Thanks!