UI for VR Plans

Is there any plans to integrate UI for VR specific functionality into UE4, or will we be:

  1. Continuing to use UMG inside a 3D plane (3D widget)?
  2. Using static meshes and ray casts to detect where the player is looking?

I quickly looked at Trello, but found nothing on the subject.

I don’t know what epic’s plans are however we have been creating menus both 2D and 3D using blueprints only. I followed the following tutorial which showed a really nice way to access stick inputs from gamepads, one of the benefits to this is that menus can be set up as blueprints and be fully 3D like for example holograms:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCXuNu4RETs

We raytrace to the menu/screen that you wish to use, highlight/make it active when traced and simply track which axis is being used, this is then turned into panning movement in the menu, this can also be used for other functionality on objects you are looking at that require movement interactions.

Thank you for you reply!
It’s research time for me…!

In our VR game we have just used an actor with text render components having visibility set on and off for everything.
I don’t know if this is the best way to go about these things but for our simple menus (which are integrated in to the world, [NOT HUD]) it works a treat.

Personally, I think that VR experiences would be best served by UI if they remained extremely minimal. Additionally I suspect UI with a heavy dose of skeuomorphism will best serve the VR experience. To that end - I think using meshes that look like something physical will in the long run probably be a better experience, but that’s just my gut. Despite that, I’ve been prototyping interacting with Widget Components with a virtual fingers/eye, but it’s completely a background task with no timeline for finishing it. It’s going to require some heavy changes to FSlateApplication to expose more low level ways of faking input to specific widget hierarchies.

Understood.

I also think that blatant, “in your face” type menu systems would distract from immersion.

Regarding skeuomorphism, depending on the subject matter and pacing of the VR game/experience, this could be used to great effect. I think Alien: Isolation does this fantastically, as does Elite Dangerous (both VR and non-VR).

For VR, it does require some out-of-the-box thinking.

Thanks for the answers. They have given me quite a few ideas!

What about floating menus within the hand’s reach? I’ve been at a talk with FramestoreVR’s tech lead that worked on the AvengersVR project. They did some cool iron-man interface UIs that work very well in VR. I’m thinking skeuomorphism will get old pretty fast. abstracted floating UIs seem a natural part of the VR vocablulary… but not having done extensive work with it… this is only my guess.

I completely agree. Minimalism is my preferred design route for VR/AR. I had to reread your first sentence. I don’t want to be stark, but I always have a hard time not feeling like skeuomorphism always ends up becoming complicated in the end. I know it doesn’t always. But I just feel like it competes with content. I’m a big fan of white for VR UI.