I’m seeking advice on setting up lighting for a VR scene. I have some doubts about the lighting system in VR.
I’m currently working on VR projects with the final goal of running the APK file smoothly on the Meta Quest 2 headset. I’m confused about the lighting system and whether I should use static, stationary, or dynamic modes. How do these choices relate to the optimization of the VR project? Do they affect optimization and packaging?
I came across a forum post stating that Lumen and Global Illumination are not supported for standalone devices like the Quest. Can you provide advice on which lighting system I should use? If possible, please share a reference video link.
Static lighting would be the most optimized. I think you could use one or two dynamic lights, but they could easily eat most of your performance. (Especially if they are shadowcasting dynamic lights)
Here’s a tip: Start with only a ‘Skylight’ (Source Type: Cubemap, set Cubemap)
This is a dead-simple way to illuminate your scene and will let you know if you have other performance concerns to take care of before lighting.
Also, you can change the editor preview quality level to better replicate what you’d see on device.
Thank you for the information regarding the lighting tips and advice. I have one last question: what kind of lights should I use, like point lights or rectangular lights in a large room such as a mechanical lab? Will using more rectangular lights or point lights affect the performance?
I’d hypothesize that if they are set to ‘Static’ mobility, they would be comparable to a point light. But if there is anything that is relying on a rect light for shadows the cost would be increased. I found this post which mentions a bit of extra info.
Also, it’s noted in the rect light doc that “The forward renderer does not currently support Rect Lights” - I believe that the Mobile Renderer used on Quest is still ‘forward’ (as opposed to deffered rendering) But it could still be worth trying to use a rect-light to bake shadows. (Since once it is baked the lighting info is inside of the shadow-maps and the light itself is no longer needed?)
for this, is it legit not possible, or just abysmal performance?
im planning on working on a game that may have a desktop VR port in the future, so im wondering if it would be okay to use lumen every once in a while (where it mattered), and used static or dynamic lighting (with low quality or no shadows) when i can.
Using Lumen, on standalone VR devices like the Meta Quest 2 can be tricky. The reason is that it’s not officially supported, and how much it affects the performance of your VR game can be different in various situations.
Because I had read more forum discussions about the lighting and some documentation.
If you’re planning to make a version of your game for desktop VR in the future, you could consider using Lumen carefully in important parts of your game. However, in most areas, it might be better to stick with simpler types of lighting (static or dynamic) that don’t put as much strain on the system. This is especially true for areas where you can use lighting without detailed shadows or with lower quality shadows.
In essence, it’s a balance between getting the visual effects you want and making sure your game runs smoothly, especially on devices like the Meta Quest 2.
thanks. yeah ill have to keep it in mind.
my current plan is to have 1 lumen light for every 8 dynamic lights, and 1 dynamic light for every 8 material based lights, tho ill probably max out at 8 lumen lights. the game is procedurally generated.
material based lights are fully dynamic, but have no reflections or shadows so super high performance. they are intended to give a scene fake GI without needing lumen. they are a pain to setup tho as you need to manually input the light location and color.
To clear up any confusion, there is no such thing as a ‘Lumen light’ (Lumen is the name of a global illumination system)
I think Lumen on Mobile could be classified as ‘not possible’ (For similar reasons to the rect-lights mentioned above, the mobile renderer is a forward renderer)
Keep an eye on the ‘General Limitations of Lumen Features’ and ’ Lumen Platform Support’ sections of this doc.
