Oculus Rift without plugin details?

Would it be possible to get some more details on this coming update?

I’ve got so much integration with the OVR plugin and have done quite a bit of work around their Unity integration, I’m curious what plans there are in terms of what you guys are planning to actually deliver in regards to this.

Will there be attached scripts, custom hierarchy as there is now, multiple cameras in the editor… Basically how far from what there is now is it expected to be? Just trying to get an idea of what to expect because I am constantly / daily tuning and changing my Rift integration as is and it would make a difference if there was a different type of integration planned where you could setup characters more traditionally and expose the Rift options at a higher level.

1 Like

nada?

I would also like to know +1

Here is a high level overview:

Instead of using OVRCameraRig (which contains one camera for each eye), you will use just one standard unity camera which will have some special properties when VR is enabled.

Having just one camera allows us to do rendering optimizations and has some benefits when creating an experience which can toggle VR.

There will be a global option to toggle VR. When enabled, some special things happen:

  • Any unity cameras without a targetTexture will automatically render both eyes from the head tracked pose to the device.

  • Camera transform becomes the reference point for head tracking.

  • Actual rendered POV is based on the head tracked pose from the camera transform.

  • Head tracking does not affect the camera transform by default.

  • Scripts can replicate this functionality or a game object hierarchy for eyes, etc if desired. We will evaluate usage patterns during alpha and see what we should provide out of the box.

  • Any image filters on the camera will occur on both eyes.

  • Layering cameras works as expected.

  • Pressing play in the editor gets you a judder free experience on the rift immediately (if your computer can hit the necessary framerate)

There will be a VR class which exposes parameters and functionality for the device if you want to go deeper with scripts (still WIP). The goal with this API is to be forward thinking so that VR experiences you build with Unity will work on future hardware without tweaking later. Some of these details may change in order to better align with this goal.

For now we are focused on getting a stable alpha build. Any feedback will be welcome during the alpha period, we will let you know when it begins.

8 Likes

Thanks for the clear feedback! This sounds like it would be preferred to the existing situation, solves several things I already made workarounds for…

Please do keep us up to date on this Alpha, I’ll be happy to test.

This sounds great! Will also be happy to test this if testers are needed further down the road : )

Question, not sure if im understanding correctly, but the tracking of head movement will the camera be moving around so that i could attached an ik rigged character to bob and weev so u can see your body moving with your head? I ask because it sounds like your doing magic and the camera never technically moves but it renders a different perspective.

The other question is will I be able to do camera effects on 1 eye and not both…? for instance what if I want a HUD to only display on 1 eye.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6jhwdCdqrE

HUD on one eye doesn’t feel like you would expect. Generally speaking, screenspace HUD is not good practice, from what I’ve seen. There are optimization tricks to get post effects to not be so heavy. A lot of times the eyes are close enough where some things can just assume the other camera is equal, which cuts out 50% of the work. You can certainly just target one camera (at this time), but I can’t really think of a use case for something like that as its very uncomfortable for the user.

I think UT is working on some integration to help with optimizing things like that.

1 Like

any word on when we will get anything from unity with regaurds to the vr?

Love the video as well :slight_smile: Did you do that?

Thanks for the high level overview - that’s very helpful. I can’t wait to get my hands on that Alpha!!!

1 Like

+1. Really looking forward to this.

About working with eyes separately: what about something like a telescope (as in Asunder: Earthbound), a telescopic sight, or something like peering through a keyhole?

Will this still be released for 4.6 as promised or will it be 5.0 only?

Will this also work with the newly announced nVidia VR SLI configuration?

I don’t think they’ve promised this for 4.6. 4.6 was the Unity UI release and as far as I know that’s the only thing they’ve promised for the 4.x dev cycle. They did announce that they will support iOS 64bit Build still in 4.6 which IMHO is kind of a waste of resources but on the other hand it’s understandable that people may not want to upgrade to 5.0 just to be able to publish to iOS. But that’s completely unrelated to Oculus Rift support :wink:

Oculus Rift support right in the editor as build-target probably won’t even make it into 5.0 (5.0 is in late beta, this feature isn’t even in Alpha, yet, so I guess you don’t have to be a psychic or on the alpha lists to make that guess). If we’re lucky, they might still add it to 5.0 after 5.0 is released. Only time will tell :wink:

They did say in another thread that it was supposed to be released in 4.5 i think originally, but i guess plans changed later on : )

1 Like

This is awesome. Do you mind if I translate this into Japanese for my fellow Japanese devs to read?