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The Oculus Rift experience - Tell us what you think!

Discussion in 'Editor & General Support' started by Thomas-Pasieka, Feb 13, 2014.

  1. Thomas-Pasieka

    Thomas-Pasieka

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    Hey there Oculus Rift users!

    If you happen to be a Oculus Rift user we would like to hear your thoughts about it's current state! What do you think is great about it? Where do you think it could use optimization or enhancements? We would love for you to share your thoughts on this matter. Please understand that this is not a rant thread but rather a thread to raise awareness of current issues and limitations. So if you feel like something needs fixing let us know!

    Unity Tech. officials will be keeping an eye on this thread so be precise and polite!

    Thank you!


    Thomas Pasieka
     
  2. Thomas-Pasieka

    Thomas-Pasieka

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    To start off I will bring up "Skybox" issue here. Currently, trying to use the standard skybox won't work right out of the box in Unity. You will see "double" and it will make you a bit sick after a while. Over on the Oculus forum there are many people who created some hacks and workarounds but I don't think that this is the perfect solution either. The member "Cybereality" on the Oculus forums seems to be the official spokes person who said this on the Skybox issue:

    "The skybox thing is a bug with Unity as far as I can tell. Basically their built-in skybox does not take a custom projection matrix into account and just draws directly into the viewport."

    While it is easily possible to create your own Skybox, I'd rather see a fix that would allow for proper use of Unity's skybox implementation.
     
  3. lmbarns

    lmbarns

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    It needs a longer cable..........................we use it with a kinect and need more room to move around. Wireless would be more than epic.
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2014
  4. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    I think he specifically means the Unity integration.

    My main gripe here is the doubling of all draw calls. I'm not strictly sure it's necessary to perform *all* the work from the first frame for the second - perhaps there's some optimisations here and as we know, speed is a problem with Rift - go slower than 60fps and it looks rough.

    Some of the things may be possible to optimise such as don't perform sorting and culling again, various redundant operations as the scene is essentially going to be looking the almost the same way twice - the saving of cpu here is probably more important for bigger rift games. Perhaps even combine mesh draw calls - all meshes twice, once offset in the same go - halving draw calls? that would be the biggest win but maybe quite tricky.

    Given Epic is taking it so seriously themselves and helping out I think it would be good to have the world's most accessible game development platform (Unity) have a little helping hand here too. Rift is being noticed because Carmack now works there. Industry never ignores Carmack.
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2014
  5. LaneFox

    LaneFox

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    There needs to be some multicamera or Rift-specific optimizations on the back end to help alleviate the double rendering hit. Heavy post effects are especially rough... Lot's of assets rely on a post effect to process things and its doubling the load with the Rift and its making it hard to optimize without making major quality impacts.

    Optimization is suddenly really important and very challenging working with the Rift. Not only do you need to maintain 60+ fps to avoid visual lag, you have to do it with double rendering load.

    Skyboxes not working and other little things here and there is trivial compared to the performance problems.
     
  6. virror

    virror

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    Problem is that to get best quality you will need to make most of the rendering twice because both cameras see the world through different angles, so things like culling, post effects and so needs to be rendered twice to get a perfect picture.
    The skybox issue should be pretty simple to fix i guess if they just gave it some priority.

    Other than that i have not seen to many issues, shadows seems to work fine as far as i have seen both in deferred and forward mode but i have not done any extensive testing on that matter.

    One thing i think they should add though is binaural audio, might not be directly related but it would add a lot to the immersion and also give then an extra edge over the competition.
     
  7. davebuchhofer

    davebuchhofer

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    One of the more jarring issues is when there are things that are only enabled in one eye, or that get culled out prematurely based on the view frustrum.

    Terrain Tree's
    Point Lights
    Shadows.

    Things that can fall out of the view frustrum of 1 eye while still being visible in the other eye.
     
  8. GMM

    GMM

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    I have only used my Oculus Rift very shortly with Unity3D, but so far it has been a pretty good experience. My biggest gripe comes with testing, since it's very annoying having to lower my screen resolution to fit the Rift itself so i can try it in editor and even when i do that it cannot take up the full screen. I don't know if there are any fixes out there for that, but it's very annoying i can't seem to make it go full screen on the Rift when testing in the editor.
     
  9. mgear

    mgear

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    - would be nice if it works without pro
    - GUI stuff doesnt really work with it..
     
  10. LaneFox

    LaneFox

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    The full screen game view borders should definitely go away if possible. Generally I make a build to test anything precise and deal with the wonkiness if I'm testing something quick in the editor.
     
  11. Thomas-Pasieka

    Thomas-Pasieka

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    I would agree on that aspect. As it stands, I have to cut down on a lot of features. I don't even use any Post Effects due to the mentioned issue (on a side note I find the integrated PostFX to be slow in general). Shadows are also a big hog on performance from my tests. There has got to be a way to reduce the double rendering of most everything when using Rift (or at least I hope that UT is working on some sort of fix/better integration).
     
  12. TylerPerry

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    Eventually will this be enabled in Unity free? Carmack has said that he doesn't have time to get up to date on the Unity code base but I guess its pretty limiting not to have it in Unity free. But I suspect sometime soon Unity free will get plugins.
     
  13. virror

    virror

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    I know there are many at the Unity theam that wants the Rift to work with free, so i guess we just have to wait and see : )
     
  14. NTDC-DEV

    NTDC-DEV

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    OVR = The namespace they use, I'm guessing it stands for Oculus VR

    Take a look at how UI is implemented in the OVR Unity integration kit... it's hell.

    So here's my big idea:
    - Make Unity's new GUI... VR Friendly!
     
  15. LaneFox

    LaneFox

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    With GUI we're finding the best solution to be rendering the GUI to a plane (flat or curved, curved looks best) right in front of the Rift Camera's and adding a custom mouse cursor. There is someone that made a VRGUI system but I haven't looked into it. If you want GUI in screenspace you have to operate in a very small portion of the screen and mirror over everything between eyes perfectly. Thats why the worldspace solution seems better, you can avoid all that.
     
  16. Thomas-Pasieka

    Thomas-Pasieka

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  17. Dave-Hampson

    Dave-Hampson

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    Has this been submitted as a bug? If so does anyone know the bug number for this?
     
  18. LaneFox

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    I don't think so. Seems like everyone assumed it was a known issue, the workaround is even on the Tuscanvy OVR demo known issue section of the Rift developer docs.

    Does someone need to file a bug report?
     
  19. Dave-Hampson

    Dave-Hampson

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    Yeah, if this can go into the Unity bug database then it can be fixed. If it a known issue with a work-around, that's great, but to get it fixed it really needs to be in the bug database. That's where the developers work from.
    Some info about reporting bugs here: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/578888/how-can-i-report-a-bug-most-effectively.html
     
  20. NTDC-DEV

    NTDC-DEV

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    Dave,

    At the risk of sounding presumptuous, is there / was there an active collaboration between Unity Tech. and Oculus VR?

    If such an 'obvious' issue was just ignored by the community, OVR Inc., and Unity Tech... it makes me wonder what's Unity's plans with OVR and VR in general?

    Should the users expect de-facto that OVR is going to be Unity-supported or is Unity Tech. being neutral and opening itself for any VR... ?

    Thinking of it, I can see a VR package being sold as an extra license by Unity in the future also.

    But I digress...

    The technical side of Unity and OVR integration is the main subject, but I think a larger conversation about official VR support in Unity with a clear engagement from Unity to support it is required. Although there is still some risk at predicting VR success by end-2014, all indications point to a massive revolution (ala Smartphone) once the first headsets hit the consumer market. Seeing that developers often plan 6-12 months in advance their projects, I think it's fair to ask those questions now.
     
    Last edited: Feb 17, 2014
  21. DarkAkuma

    DarkAkuma

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    I'll add a HUGE +1 to getting the Rift support in Unity Free!

    There's so many creators out there that can't afford Pro, or wouldn't need it for anything other than Rift support. It's such a shame to exclude them and stifle the amount of VR content we could be otherwise seeing.
     
  22. Thomas-Pasieka

    Thomas-Pasieka

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    Thanks for your input on that matter! I too would like to hear some official response on that matter. As it stands neither Oculus or Unity Tech. have been very outspoken on this subject which leaves us developers a bit in the dark as to what's happening behind the scenes. We don't know who is doing what and that adds to the confusion and wrong finger pointing :)
     
  23. Dave-Hampson

    Dave-Hampson

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    So I chased up this issue: there is actually a bug in the database (issue 540700), and it should be fixed in a future version of Unity.

    In this particular case, it looks like there's an issue with the built in skybox, and some workarounds were found (e.g. https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=844 )

    If there's any more bugs with Unity and Oculus, please do bug them. Don't worry if the issue is too obvious, better to have two issues in the bug database and resolve one as a dupe than to have none and just assume the issue is known about.

    And relax, there is definitely a lot of love between the two companies!
     
  24. NTDC-DEV

    NTDC-DEV

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    It's so rare to have a tribune with Unity engineers that it's hard to resist asking those 'pesky' question! ;)

    Also, I feel that because there are so many of you (engineers) in so many different areas of expertise at Unity Tech., it becomes difficult to direct those questions to the right person as we have no idea who it could be.

    I guess the relative opaqueness (and changing nature) of the internal Unity roadmap makes it hard for Unity developers to predict anything, I hope you can forgive my eagerness to extract some gold nuggets from you all.

    Thanks for taking the time to come here Dave, it's always appreciated.
     
    Last edited: Feb 17, 2014
  25. Dave-Hampson

    Dave-Hampson

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    Is there an feedback entry for this by the way on here http://feedback.unity3d.com/ ?
    I had a quick look but I couldn't see one, would be good to gauge popularity for this versus the other issues in Unity.
     
  26. DarkAkuma

    DarkAkuma

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    Best I could find from a quick search is this. I'm a real noob to Unity and these forums though. Someone else may be more suited to find a better feedback entry for the topic.
     
  27. sh0v0r

    sh0v0r

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    For me the biggest issue is not being able to target a display device. This is a BIG problem and needs to be addressed to improve the User Experience. When someone buys an Oculus Kit and runs a Unity powered title they are likely to encounter problems with getting the game to display on the correct Device.

    iRacing works automatically, it detects which display ID the Rift is on and runs it there. I believe the UDK also does this, Unity really needs to make this possible.

    My game Lunar Flight is on Steam and I have had people complain that they didn't know how to target the display by creating a commandline setting with '-adapter N'

    Other than that issue, the Skybox problem would be nice to get fixed but I don't see it as a huge priority. Getting it to work in the Free version would also be nice for hobbyists but as a professional developer with a Pro license it doesn't matter to me.

    If there is anyway to optimise the rendering to share pre calculated data between cameras that would be a big win for everyone.
     
    Last edited: Feb 18, 2014
  28. LaneFox

    LaneFox

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    This is probably the biggest concern for most people. When you optimize current games up until now its usually just one camera, with some layered others maybe for showing weapons or something fairly simple but now we have two primary cameras that need 100% of the game shown.
     
  29. Dave-Hampson

    Dave-Hampson

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    Is a bug in the Unity database for this issue?
     
  30. Thomas-Pasieka

    Thomas-Pasieka

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    Just bumping this up with the latest news. You can now pre-order DK2! Also, we would love to hear developer experiences. Encountered bugs? Issues? Don't hesitate to post here!

    Oculus Rift Devkit 2 Pre-Order page: http://www.oculusvr.com/dk2/
     
  31. Dave-Hampson

    Dave-Hampson

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    Just thinking randomly here, maybe it's possible to create a little 'stub' program which detects the Rift display and launches the 'real exe' with -adaptor N, has anyone played around with that? Or is there maybe another solution involving checking which adapter the Rift is on and calling SetResolution that anyone has got working?

    Also am I right this only happens if you have your displays set to 'extend'? I've been running a whole bunch of demos on my DK1 and I usually set my displays to 'Duplicate'. I only today noticed that Half Life 2 actually works in either (nice!), as does the official Oculus Calibration Utility.

    Also am I right that there are issues with debugging, as in it would be nice to have the game running on the Rift display and have the Unity scene view and MonoDevelop on your main monitor?
     
  32. davebuchhofer

    davebuchhofer

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    at Dev-time:
    That's actually my main mode of working, although with a somewhat hacked together editor script that moves the game view to the second monitor and sets it to 'popupwindow' mode so that I can view it with a 'full screen' effect.

    at Play-time:
    I tend to go with the mirrored version for ease of use, and to allow others to see what I'm doing on the device.

    for Publishing:
    Yea, I guess an extra launcher application would be a viable workaround.

    I've had mixed results using the win32 style SetWindowPos/etc to move and size the window AFTER it has been created in extended monitor mode. Sometimes It works passably, sometimes I lose acceleration (?!)
     
  33. Dave-Hampson

    Dave-Hampson

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    Nice!
     
  34. MichaelSchenck

    MichaelSchenck

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    I wanted to say that the tree billboard system in the terrain engine has issues with the Rift. The tree billboards bend at really strange angles in stereo and also don't switch consistently for both eyes - you get a billboard on one and a mesh on the other. I have had some luck with the Advanced Foliage shaders on the asset store to at least get aligned billboards, although i still see issues with the the leaf rendering twisting oddly. I have not found any solution to the switching. I think these things should be easy to fix and are just side effects of the terrain system and shaders working independently in each camera.

    I am also trying to sort out why the LOD system seems off. I get different results in the scene view and the the rift (the lod bias is the same). I am trying to figure out if it has something to do with the half width cameras or maybe just that we are looking at the screen so close through the lenses and the pixel/screen size ratio is making no sense. I still have yet to find an explanation of the actual algorithm used to calculate those percentages. I know it is screen space so it can be scale independent, but do they figure out pixel density or just look at pixels vs screen size, then which dimension? If anyone has properly working LODs on the Rift let me know if you did anything to make it work.
     
  35. Thomas-Pasieka

    Thomas-Pasieka

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    Just bumping this up so other Rift users can leave their feedback please :)
     
  36. KC1302

    KC1302

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    Maybe my IPD isn't configured correctly, but still feel motionsick after 6 months.
    Overall a revolutionary profoundly awesome experience. In my opinion Oculus OVR can be compared with the invention of the black and white TV.
     
  37. Thomas-Pasieka

    Thomas-Pasieka

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    I think the main issue with DK1 is the low resolution and "smearing" it had. Even on a very powerful machine it would cause nausea due to the mentioned issues (and other factors come into play as well). Positional tracking and all the new tech that went into DK2 should greatly improve the experience.
     
  38. Dave-Hampson

    Dave-Hampson

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    Yeah that's one thing they have said for DK2: the nausea is greatly reduced (if you aren't moving in-game).
    I'm hoping so because I suffer really badly from it with DK1!
     
    Thomas-Pasieka likes this.
  39. shaneK001

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    I made a demo with the untiy terrain trees and they do this freaky billboard battle, that looks cool, but not right(might be excellent for a fear and loathing type demo). Ended up making a 3d tree with 3d leaves in blender to avoid that wierd rolling thing.
    Also, couldn't use a skybox at all, but I think in the tuscany demo they used a static box of 3d models as a skybox. Ended up settling on a colour sky myself.
    Looking forward to adding DK2 stuff soon though, messing with the oculus is a load of fun.
     
  40. Dave-Hampson

    Dave-Hampson

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    I was under the impression this was fixed in 4.5...
    http://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/oculus-rift-skybox-issues
    What version are you using?
     
  41. shaneK001

    shaneK001

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    Had no idea, I haven't made anything in the oculus since before 4.5.
     
  42. thorp

    thorp

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    Hi, thanks for hosting this thread.

    It came up in a separate thread that it would be useful for a script to be able to add items to the "edit> project settings> input" data structure. This would allow the OVR scripts to set additional default input items, like the key for bringing up the main menu, and then the unity developer could change it's value in the "correct" place, the unity input window.

    Without setters for creating named inputs, it appears that OVR can't use getButton() and expose the name string in the input window. The current way creates the potential for hidden key conflicts between the controller and the developer's game code.

    ( External thread: https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=9871&p=126288#p126288 )

    I'm sure there are reasons for not including the setters (security?), but thought I'd raise the issue since that's the purpose of the thread.

    Best regards.
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2014
  43. thorp

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    While I'm here, two other things come to mind.

    1) A bad 'sort order' for layered alpha-enabled objects can create serious DIMS effects. I have two layers of "see through grid" as a floor (think of two catwalks stacked vertically) and the points where they overlap behave strangely. I understand that this can be fixed by writing my own shader and applying it to the Rift cams, though I haven't tried that yet. It would be nice to have the default Unity transparency shaders reviewed wrt the Rift.

    2) Right now buying Unity store assets is hit or miss for the Rift. They have definitely sped up my development, but it would be nice (and add value for me) to have a "rift enabled" type of sticker for rift tested assets.
     
  44. Dave-Hampson

    Dave-Hampson

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    Can you post a screenshot for this? Sounds like it may not be gamma correct maybe?

    Also, what is a 'DIMS' effect?
     
  45. Breakwhore

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    Might this help your issue https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=689&p=7365 ?
     
  46. MrEsquire

    MrEsquire

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    I Pre Ordered a month ago, still waiting no news on delivery.
    Cannot seem to find a deliver thread. I think once more people have the device then we can start posting much more.
     
  47. Dave-Hampson

    Dave-Hampson

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    I think if you pre-ordered a month ago you'll get it in August rather than July. Personally I'm counting down the hours!
     
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  48. LaneFox

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    Definitely hit or miss, I almost entirely avoid any new assets that rely on post effects, extra cameras or use the camera depth map. If I especially want something I ask about it working with the Rift or find out if I can specifically make it work on my own before buying it.. There were quite a few things I ditched just because it was hard/impossible to integrate into a Rift game.

    With that said, I'm not really sure it merits an official sticker for Rift comparability in the store, more likely we'll see a description change or something on assets that have confirmed support for it. Most people don't even have a devkit to test on so its quite early to be adding something like that.
     
  49. Thomas-Pasieka

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    From what I gather they start shipping out on July 2nd. I am eagerly awaiting mine :)
     
  50. Dave-Hampson

    Dave-Hampson

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    Wha - a whole extra 24 HOURS?!?!

    j/k!

    *rubs hands*