Unreal Engine 4.23 Preview

[UnexpectedSquirt]

The first issue has been already reported: https://issues.unrealengine.com/issue/UE-77549

Glad you found that second issue cause I stumbled on that as well and couldn't work it out! Could you post the issue here so we can upvote it?

I also reported these two issues which are related to mobileVR as well:

https://issues.unrealengine.com/issue/UE-76654
https://issues.unrealengine.com/issue/UE-70092

both block you from doing a release for those platforms

Darn, seems like mobile VR platforms have been getting regressed pretty hard the last couple of updates

I don't have a link to the bug yet. I guess Epic might email a link to one when it's confirmed ?

[VKleinMP]

It won't make that much of a difference in performance if you're not using a lot of masked stuff, with a bunch of overdraw, like trees and grass. You can see if it's working by looking at a masked actor in material complexity view mode (Alt+8). When "Mask material only in early z-pass" is enabled, you should only see the masked part of the material. If it's not working, you'll see the masked material the same as you would a transparent one: the transparent parts cause overdraw and are colored more towards red in material complexity view mode.

Exactly, and I can't see any difference in shader complexity view on my opacity mapped trees and grass with the feature switched on/off what so ever in 4.22.

[Daffrendo]

Just as a spoiler for Raytrace in 4.23 Preview 4:
It's still the same with the Translucent shadows being fully opaque, with the Translucent Raster option not working while Ratytracing, and the thing with GI not working right unless you enable the Raytrace shadows in Skylight...

Basically all same since 4.23.Preview 3. Just in general, a lot of 'Chaos' with Raytracing

"4.24" - We are looking at YOU!

[NilsonLima]

Daffrendo Epic staff predicted a long series of previews until release, so wait for at least preview 6 or 7 until final release, if not even longer list of previews.

[Nerdsbeware]

Exactly, and I can't see any difference in shader complexity view on my opacity mapped trees and grass with the feature switched on/off what so ever in 4.22.

Ah... so now I know why my forest level dropped like 5 fps when I switched to 4.22 lol. Oh well, I’m sure it’ll get fixed soon.

[UnexpectedSquirt]

aussieburger Soooo, I was informed that my "flipped mesh faces" bug couldn't be repro'd by their engineers, but that it wound up being the same as https://issues.unrealengine.com/issue/UE-77927 , so I guess go ahead and upvote that one if you are getting flipped mesh faces on Android in 4.23?

I'm not using "media player textures" at all, and I'm not sure why they couldn't repro this one without them ...... but as long as it gets fixed I'm happy

edit: One thing I did notice is that it only seems to affect skeletal meshes and procedural meshes in my scene. Static meshes are unaffected.

[Daffrendo]

What's the deal with the Virtual Textures?!!!

Every time I now import a texture in, it has a "VT", and NONE of the texture fields will accept it, always has a RED bracket (not GREEN).
Even a same texture that was accepted into Unreal from another project is getting this "VT" designation, and will not be accepted!...

I can't import any textures into a project!

EDIT - they can be accepted into the Material Editor, but NOT as a 2D scalar parameter....
How do I deactivate this "VT" thing!!!!

[Daffrendo]

I figured it out...you have to DEACTIVATE Virtual Texture in the Texture Details....

Very un-user Friendly to have to go through the extra step to turn it off!
Actually, is there a default import On-Off switch somewhere so that I can set my preference not to have the "VT" designation by default, it just is getting in my way.

[The_Distiller]

You can turn off virtual texture support all together in the project settings -> Rendering -> Virtual Textures.

[Daffrendo]

Daffrendo Epic staff predicted a long series of previews until release, so wait for at least preview 6 or 7 until final release, if not even longer list of previews.

See, this is why I originally asked about if the release was focused on just Chaos or not.
Because does it make sense to report bugs to an in-development version that could have code completely different a few sessions down...You know what I am saying?
But okay, this makes more sense then, I would think we should wait until they will really be addressing RayTracing to actually create Bug reports.
Otherwise imagine one would report say on Preview 2, when something really won't even be addressed until much later, and in the meantime the code is outdated by the time the bug is addressed.

Thanks for letting us know, otherwise the dev staff would be overloaded with outdated RayTracing stuff.
It's one thing if they addressed in the next release, but that does not appear to be the case.
THX!

[NilsonLima]

See, this is why I originally asked about if the release was focused on just Chaos or not.
Because does it make sense to report bugs to an in-development version that could have code completely different a few sessions down...You know what I am saying?
But okay, this makes more sense then, I would think we should wait until they will really be addressing RayTracing to actually create Bug reports.
Otherwise imagine one would report say on Preview 2, when something really won't even be addressed until much later, and in the meantime the code is outdated by the time the bug is addressed.

Thanks for letting us know, otherwise the dev staff would be overloaded with outdated RayTracing stuff.
It's one thing if they addressed in the next release, but that does not appear to be the case.
THX!

Good that you brought this up and I want to clarify the importance of submitting bugs (any Epic member can also come up and enforce what I am about to say Tim Hobson)

When the dev team decides to put a release on preview, lets use the 4.23 as example, a separate branch for 4.24 is already created where they continue to develop while the preview is out (not to mention several experimental branches for specific modules and plugins!), so whenever a bug is submitted via form, it is compared with the branch for the specific preview number, against any other that might be released after and also with the one in development, in this case and example 4.24!

This is fairly normal for development and it is also important, because even between previews, something can break! There is no painless path, otherwise test against all. If you say it was working on 4.22.3, then they will add that too, so they can pin-point when the deviation happened!

So, report is a must, with repro steps highly desirable, crash reports while connected with launcher helps identify the user submitting the report, so they can contact the person about the circumstances aswel.

Do not get discouraged with playing with the previews, since there are separate teams working with Chaos, Niagara and Raytracing. The previews exist in order to quickly map hot spots where the users are playing with, and also the Raytracing was told would take many release iterations until it can be considered "released" as feature for once, mainly because it traverses several other features.

[Warner V]

It seems that in my projects (in heavy scenes, mostly static, just with many tris) performance of 4.23preview4 is significantly worse than in 4.22. Is this something that is still worked on? Is there any particular element (in materials?) that I can look at for a cause/resolution? As it is now, it looks to be a bit challenging to migrate the project, since we can not afford to lose the performance..

Thanks for any tips! (and I'd be happy to provide more information, of course)

4.22:


4.23preview4

[Odenir]

It won't make that much of a difference in performance if you're not using a lot of masked stuff, with a bunch of overdraw, like trees and grass. You can see if it's working by looking at a masked actor in material complexity view mode (Alt+8). When "Mask material only in early z-pass" is enabled, you should only see the masked part of the material. If it's not working, you'll see the masked material the same as you would a transparent one: the transparent parts cause overdraw and are colored more towards red in material complexity view mode.

Hi RVillani. Thanks for the reply. I'm using a lot of masked materials, like trees and grass. It's a open world. I watched a video about it and when "mask material only in early z-pass" was working, the performance was really better, but on forums people say it's not working on 4.22. I'm not really sure if it's or isn't working, because I don't know too much about it.
That's why I asked if it will work on 4.23. I tried now (4.22.3) and looks like it's not working, because it's all the same color (red and white). I don't know if it's fixed on preview.
If it does not work, I will remake my trees and grass.

When I have a lot of grass on my map, my scene is 100% white on grass part, so the performance is really bad.

On the tutorial video I watched, the "Mask material only in early z-pass" turned on looked like a magical solution for my problem.

[Corey.Thomas]

Is there a way to use the Gamevice Ipad controller in conjunction with the virtual camera plug in?

[Schwingggg]

In preview 4 "Fixed! UE-76567 Undoing the selection of a bone in the ChaosDestructionDemo takes a long time". What is "ChaosDestructionDemo"? Is it a demo project? If so, where can we find it?