Since the Windows Mixed reality headsets are going to be compatible with the SteamVR library of games… does that means that we can play our developments over those headsets already?
Also, what do we have to do to adapt an existing project that works with the VIVE to be compatible with any of the windows mixed reality headsets?
We need that because inside-out tracking is capital to one of our clients and he wants our app to be ported to those headsets, so we need some solution, is 4.18 capable of doing this?
(Please don´t refere me to the UWP version of the engine since our project is in 4.17 and we are going to migrate it to 4.18 soon, so an old 4.14 version is not a valid one… )
I would have thought that by the time that Microsoft and Valve sort out SteamVR support in December that you can run ANY SteamVR game on those headsets via a translation layer, the same way that Vive games work on the Rift. So in theory you SHOULD be able to run a Vive or Rift project without taking any extra steps.
That is my hope also, but I would like to hear some official words about this.
The question is… if you have a project developed to work with Steam VR (using Vive) and you run it over an Oculus Rift… does it works?
I don´t have a Rift right now to test it, we work just with Vives and mobile (and WMR soon).
I was able to get a build version of our application working with the Windows Mixed Reality Steam VR Preview and the Samsung Odyssey MR headest. Everything worked about as expected — controls just mapped up and tracking worked. I wasn’t able to get it working within the editor though, but I only spent maybe 5 minutes or so on it before giving up (I had several other non-UE4-related issues to mess with).
If UE4 worked for VR you could create for vive and use with odyssey but right now EVERY UE4 version has bugs that deem VR game useless.
I’ve spent years of time developing on vive and now WMR in Unreal and Unity, and Unreal is not fit for WMR at this time and here is why.
In 4.17 a lot of people are facing an issue where HBZ setup MIP or HBZ MIPMIP are causing lag spiking from 5-50+ ms without a reason why and disabling the ZBuffer does not solve the issue. Some people tracked the issue and it ended with UE Devs stating the issue will be fixed in 4.18 deeming 4.17 useless for VR devs because that lag spike usually will make you miss your 11ms/90FPS mark that is essential to VR Dev. 5-50ms lag spike that cannot be fixed, deems this build unusable for vr devs because you cannot launch a game that lags like that.
In 4.18 the previous problem is fixed BUT now there is a new problem where the screen is all warped and distorted right out of the box. This is reproducible simply by opening the VR template, touching nothing, and running it. There are no solutions online for this issue, and barely any talk, but anyone using WMR has found this to be the issue with 4.18xx builds.
So on to 4.19! Nope, Even in the VR template after about 20-30 seconds the game window freezes and you have to terminate UE to get it back. Since 4.19 is beta and just came out there are no discussion topics on this issue yet.
We here at the office had plans on using UE4 compared to Unity for a few future projects, but seeing as how there are no legit builds that actually work for VR, we will certainly NOT use Unreal engine anymore.
The WMR setup is a game changer for Archviz because we are now very portable without the outside tracking. We want to buy the Dell Visor but i still don’t know if it will work with Unreal Engine editor and preview. Is there more clearness about the integration with WMR? It is stopping us to buy the Dell Visor and working with Unreal now…
I’ve been working using both Vive and Samsung Odyssey since last month.
After the setup for the Odyssey ( which took very small time if you’re on Win10 ), it works out of the box with UE4 via SteamVR.
SteamVR recognize the HMD and the controllers, and also in UE4 the template I’m using ( Mitch VR Template ) it just needed a small tweak, but overall everything works out of the box.
The only thing I notice is that, if you’re developing with the Odyssey and test your game quite often, UE4 crashes A LOT, so the best solution for now is to test the game once you did something significant, and also remember to save quite often!
Test did on 4.17.2 and 4.18.2
Overall the Odyssey visual quality is beautiful, and basically I already know what the Vive Pro visual will look like.
Next for me will be to test the Odyssey with the MSI VR One to have Wolrd Scale VR setup
I’ll probably post a video about it in the next weeks
Muchcharles tracked down the WMR crashing, for the most part it is caused by the headset going to sleep and killing the audio source that the engine is using which crashes it.
You likely can be better off if you set the HMD to never use its own audio source.
