VR Enabled…

I’ve had Oculus Rift up and running on the game for a while now but finally decided to take a screenshot after revisiting some talks from Steam Dev Days.  Big thanks to Michael Abrash of Valve and everyone else that presented at the Steam Dev Days.  Tons of great info out there and its always nice to get another technical opinion on VR from someone who isn’t employed by Oculus….  You know, someone slightly less bias.

The Oculus Rift hardware has a ways to go so its nice to see someone not only take the time to investigate but share their findings with the public.   Knowing that the hardware and software required for VR to become feasible is at least known and on top of that quite possibly within reach  is nice to hear.

Michael Abrash’s Talk  – “What VR could, should, and almost certainly will be within two years” PDF Version and Youtube Version.

Oculus Rift – “Best Practices ” PDF Version.

As for my game….

Basic VR functionality is in but I will have to spend some time in the future to figure out what works best.  I implemented the Unity controller provided with the SDK.  Required some changes to the movement and camera code on my end but nothing too major.  Currently maneuvering the player based on the look direction of the HMD (Head mounted display).  When moving forward look left to turn left and look right to turn right.  If the forward movement key is NOT being pressed you can look around to your hearts content without causing the player to rotate.  Movement rotation works similar in concept to an analog stick as the rotation continues until you reset to a neutral or upright position.  If you look to the left while moving forward and keep looking in that direction the player will continue to turn left until you correct your view to look straight ahead.

There are some benefits to this.  Its far less disorienting when the camera view is only influenced by the HMD input. Unfortunately with the current mechanics and the amount of constant turning even though you don’t have to move your head too far, it can get tiring moving your head back and forth.   I briefly left the camera rotation bound to mouse input  with the HMD stacked on top for additional viewing functionality but didn’t like the result.  It was a quick and dirty attempt as I only really wanted to see what it was like to steer with the HMD input.  I’ll have to revisit the mouse and HMD stacked input in the future to see if I can come up with a better implementation that’s hopefully less disorienting.

As for the last 2-3 weeks, I’ve been experimenting with grass types and PC hardware problems.  I tried to participate in the Titanfall beta but it locked up my PC anytime I tried to do something outside of the training tutorial.  To top it off, Unity decided to lock up after I decided to “Stop playing games and make them”.  After some investigation I decided it was a hardware problem and opted for a full system upgrade, now I just gotta wait for the shipment to arrive.