UNITY: Render separate in-game camera to desktop.

[Harvey]

Hi there, I'm developing with Unity 5 and am trying to figure out how to render a *separate* view to the desktop - rather than mirroring the headset view.

So, I expect this will be twofold: How do I disable mirroring the VR view to the desktop, and how do I then render from a different camera without affecting the in-headset VR view?

Any help would be much appreciated.

[jashan]

When using Unity 5.0-5.3, you just add another camera, make sure it renders above "Camera (head)" (of the SteamVR plugin) and that's it. I'm not sure ATM if you can disable Camera (head) to gain a bit of performance (the SteamVR plugin does some non-standard things for rendering, including disabling cameras and still rendering them). The good news is that Camera (head) does not eat a lot of performance because it just puts an image that already was rendered on the main screen.

Using Unity 5.4+, where SteamVR relies on the native VR integration of Unity, you need to make sure that your companion window camera (= "camera that renders to flat screen") has Render Eye "None" set (I'm currently in Unity 5.3, so I'm not sure about the exact names but I'm sure you'll find it ... can be "Both", "Left", "Right" and "None", and "None" means "render to flatscreen"; don't confuse it with the Render Target which lets you assign different monitors).

[Harvey]

Great! Adjusting the depth parameter to render my camera above the VR camera worked perfectly, I didn't expect it to be so simple.

Thanks for the help :D

[chris]

Originally posted by Harvey:

Great! Adjusting the depth parameter to render my camera above the VR camera worked perfectly, I didn't expect it to be so simple.

Thanks for the help :D

Yes, the critical part for me was changing the 'depth' of the render camera to be higher (0) than the VR camera (-1)

[87 I FrostyFinn]

Ah I forgot that this was changed. Thanks for having this thread available.

[Sibris]

how do i do this in unity 2020.3.12f1?