We are discovering an issue that is causing us a lot of problems when recording vcam. The virtual camera has so much noise that it interrupts our recordings. The hard thing about this is that it is not 100% consistent. I attached a video to this ticket. Our iPad and Vive tracking set-ups are both wireless on the same computer network. Below I will list all the troubleshooting steps and observations:
Observations:
Gets worse when shooting vcam for a number of hours.
Gets worse when you adjust the scale on the vcam UI to be higher than x1
Inconsistent. Sometimes we connect with minimal noise and sometimes it is super noisy right off the bat.
Troubleshooting Observations:
Tested on a virtual camera using the Vive Headset tracking system and a regular cinecamera. The vive tracker is controlling an actor that the camera is parented under. The system is wireless and relies on receivers and vive trackers. We see the jitter/noise on this set up too with the shoulder rig placed on the ground, which we concluded rules out our questions about network, brightness of the room, and ipad issues.
We tried different uprojects including empty ones, different desktop computers, and different rooms. Still had jitter/noise. This ruled out brightness of the room, Vive kit interference, and uproject settings.
I connected my iPad from home virtually vs. in office. I can get the noise to appear in both places.
Tested in custom build 5.4 and 5.6 as well as the vanilla build.
We’ve ran out of ideas to test and are looking for some guidance or confirmation that this is a known issue that is being looked at.
Steps to Reproduce
Open a level with a cube. Drop in a vcam actor. Connect to the Unreal Vcam app on an iPad. Get the vcam in a position where there is a foreground element. Pause the position and place the iPad propped up on a solid surface and unpause the vcam. Make sure the camera on the iPad is facing towards the room with enough light and objects in view for best tracking.
We are looking into this on our side now. I can confirm that it does not appear to be isolated to just you but I will keep you updated as we learn more and hopefully find a quick solution.
Hey Heather! We are trying to reproduce this consistently and had a few questions. Does this occur both when using AR Kit tracking and Vive Tracking? Does it happen with ARKit alone? Vive Tracking alone? Does it happen when the VCam is not parented to anything?
When you say “both” do you mean “at the same time”? We haven’t used them at the same time since we have the Vive tracker headset we need to launch the engine with -xrtrackingonly tag to get it to work and using vcam makes it crash in that state. And yes we’ve been able to see it with ARKit alone and Vive Tracking alone and it does happen when vcam is not parented to anything. Usually I drop in the vcam and just fly it up to the closest object and get it really close in the foreground, but I’ve also tested it while parented and get the same thing. Then playing with the scale settings on the vcam UI I can sometimes trigger it to start effecting the x1 scale view. Usually I let it sit for up to an hour too to see if it just gets tired. I’m not super versed in the technical aspects behind these set-ups but hopefully that helps a little bit.
I did mean at the same time, yes. Thank you for the clarification. It’s particularly interesting that you see it with Vive alone. Do you get this when there is NO tracking source? If you disable ARKit and don’t connect the Vive puck, does it still move, or does it then remain stationary? We will keep investigating and keep you updated
Hi Michael, I’m not sure I completely follow but we don’t use the attach tracks as far as I know. The only things that we do that involve attaching or parenting are the following:
Vive tracker system drives an empty null that is possessable and parented under other empty null actors and under it is a cinecamera actor at the bottom.
Separately when we shoot vcam on the ipad we do use the UI option to parent the vcam under another cinecamera actor in the scene. But we were getting jittering with and without the use of that tool.
It does answer my question, and I have been able to replicate the issue without the Vive tracker setup as well. The VP Dev team is aware. It will take some time to discover the root issue. Having not tested it, can you verify that your camera in the Vive Tracker setup does NOT have the same issue?