What are /r/learnVRdev's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Oculus maintains a fork of Unreal with upstream changes and some samples. The Hand Sample sounds like exactly what you're looking for. By default the sample blueprint toggles between showing hands or the device model, but you can easily modify it to show both at the same time instead.

In my experience the samples work fine with the binary distributions from Epic, so you should be able to clone the repo and import the sample into 4.20 without issue.

You'll need access to the base UE4 repo to see Oculus's fork, so make sure you follow that page's directions if you don't already have it set up.

Assets are a big part of it for sure, but just take a look at the changelog for Unreal Engine 4.11, I think the sheer amount of work that goes into performance and rendering speaks for itself. Not that Unity can't render breathtaking scenes as well, but I do feel that UE emphasizes it, and contains a multitude of modern techniques that aren't found on many other engines (if any at all). But then it is up to the artist to put these techniques to good use :)

Disclaimer: I have used neither engines myself for any extended period of time, I just try to follow their development because it interests me!

When you built in Unity did you use any other packages? Specifically the GoogleVR package?

While Unity does have a stereoscopic VR rendering option built in, I don't believe there is any native sensor events trying it to the camera. So the app doesn't know if you are looking around.

The Google VR SDK gets 3DoF information from VRCore (the Google VR Services) package that you install, if you install Google Cardboard. So with the Google VR SDK you just have to drop in the prefabs or modify the default scene camera so its tracks to the phones movements.

A bit of an underwhelming response here, it seems :\

You might try posting a gameplay clip next time (OBS Studio is a free solution). Asking people to click through a text post, to a link, to a downloader, to installing and hooking up a HMD, is a bit laborious for folks who are casually browsing Reddit. Watching a YouTube video of a project is much easier, and can be accomplished in mere seconds without exiting the front page/sub. Then, viewers whose interest is piqued can click through to the link. Basically you're making a commercial.

That said, I think your payment-optional model is on the right track, so that other developers can browse around the market while those looking for entertainment can opt to pay.

I haven't downloaded the updated version yet myself, but what I played a few weeks ago was quite functional and coherent as an experience! But most of all I love that you've updated a Game & Watch concept, a system with only the most basic of gameplay mechanisms and LCD display, and have thrown it into fully-immersive VR. I was nerding out to my friend about it the other day, actually.

Are you going to continue working on this, or have you other projects in your sights?

I was wondering about this the other day, I bet there are a lot of people who are just starting out in VR Dev (like me) as well as some people who got in a few years ago and have a lot of experience in the field but there's no central place or community that I'm aware of dedicated to it. I've been toying with the idea of starting something on meetup.com in my area. Then I started thinking that I'm considering subreddits and real-world meetup tools...is it time to start thinking about making a VR space to meet up in? Is that even feasible yet?

I did exactly this in my android VR app. People were begging for an image viewer to be added, and i basically just made it work exactly how they told me. The image shows on the screen at a fixed distance, and the user can change the field of view of the camera. In one case, there's an option to change the distance from the camera to the image.

To me, it seems like there is only one combination of position, size, and fov that looks best with 3D images, and getting closer/bigger/narrower or further/smaller/wider just doesn't convince my brain that i'm moving within the image. I think 180/360 images are slightly more convincing than flat ones, but i don't think it's possible to just mess with properties to make it awesome. Black magic is probably required for the job.

But... my users love the feature, so maybe they just understand and accept this limitation, or maybe their eyes are just less discerning than a developer's eyes.

To sum it up in two sentences, this is a VR twist (pun not intended... or is it?!) on the endless runner formula in which you have to actually spin around to keep up with your character :) I know it's trivially simple but still, I'm immensely proud to finally have something to show that is actually a full, self-contained video game.

As with all projects, had periods of total blast developing it and periods of total discouragement but pushed through to have it released and in the end, I feel very content to have it up on the market, regardless of how simple it is with its mechanics :) Not trying to profit off of it (don't even have any ads or IAPs inside), I just made it for the heck of it and to play with the technology that always thrilled me (hell, early prototypes of that game were even in my Master's thesis which was on virtual reality!).

Hope you'll like it, thanks in advance for every playthrough and feedback! :) It's up on the Play Store now.

It's not GLUT based, but I did create a single-file example for writing a VR app using OpenGL and GLFW/GLEW here.

And a book although it uses the 0.5 SDK, so it's a little outdated if you're working on PC.

There is actually an app that can mirror from a running GearVR I've used in the past. It works pretty well as long as you are on a reliable network connection. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.awindinc.galaxysender The app needs to be installed on the phone and be started before you put the phone into the headset. On the receiving device you need to install a special receiver tool. For Windows it would be this one: http://www.mirrorop.com/product_Windows_Receiver.html