Ability to Rotate Playspace by 90 Degrees?

[gevarre]

So pretty much every game I've played so far has their play area set up to be either square, or if it's a rectangle, the long way faces forward, which to me seems natural.

Unfortunately, I have a volume that's roughly twice as long as it is wide, and no matter what I do when I run room setup, SteamVR always seems to force forward as facing one of the short sides. This means that I smack into a wall right away when I try to walk towards something, but there's all this wasted space to the side. Instead of just blocking off a square in the middle of that rectangle, I'd really like to take advantage of the whole space.

I would really, really like to see the ability to rotate which way is forward when I do room setup (not rotate the playable volume inside the rectangle, but rotate the actual outer rectangle itself)
Furthermore, it would be even better if the player could bring up the dashboard and set forward, in 90 degree increments, on a per-game basis.

Currently, while I'm developing, I find myself orienting my game, knowing that SteamVR is going to rotate it, to force forward to be in the direction I want it. Of course I can't release the game like that or others will then find everything off.

Any chance this could be added? Or is it already possible and I'm missing something obvious?

[Kazy]

During room setup, when it asks you to point towards your monitor, have you tried just pointing to one of the long sides of your playspace?

[gevarre]

Yep. It doesn't matter. It will pick either one or the other of the short sides to face.

[isotropy]

FWIW, we had to add this ability into Fantastic Contraption to shoot the trailer. It really should be an option within Steam VR its self IMO.

[Christen]

The longer side facing away from your PC is the default forward facing direction, but you can rotate this in Room Setup. Select edit as you complete tracing your bounds.

[gevarre]

Actually, that is only partially correct and the whole reason for the problem. After tracing the room bounds, the editing screen has a white rectangle showing the edge of the traced space, a green rectangle showing the playable area, and a white arrow showing default forward.

Yes, you can rotate the green playable area when you edit, but the problem is, if I rotate it 90 degree so that the forward arrow faces the long direction of the rectangle, both sides of that green rectangle are now out-of-bounds. The only way to get this orientation to work is to reduce the sides of the rectangle until it becomes a square. I've just lost half my playable area.

What we need is to be able to rotate just the arrow, not the play space, re-orienting forward independently of anything else. It currently seems rather arbitrary, and I can't see a reason for it. All the testing I've done points to people instinctively wanting to move forward and back a lot more than side-to-side. Putting the forward direction facing the shortest distance doesn't really make much sense, at least not to me.

Interestingly, the illustration in the setup showing the guy pointing at his computer shows the computer at the long end of a rectangular room. Unfortunately, he's going to be a bit confused when what was implied as forward gets rotated left or right.

Honestly, it would be so much easier if instead of the instructions saying "point the controller at the computer", it just said, "point the controller in the direction you want to be forward", or, "point the controller in the direction you would like to face when playing games". Right now your setup tries to interpret the player's intentions (if the computer faces this way, then they must want to do this...) rather than explicitly asking the player what they want to do.

And if you really want to improve the system, it would be great to have an option in steam that says, "Always orient VR games in the direction the player is facing when the game starts." Just like when the dashboard comes up. Go ahead and snap that to 90-degree increments relative to the capture volume if you want. I, for one, instinctively always put on the headset facing forward and then start the game. Additionally, as has been said before, at any point during the game I should be able to bring up the dashboard and click on a rotate left or right button to re-orient the game to my preference, but now I'm just dreaming.

I know you had to start somewhere, but of course part of what makes this all so exciting is that it's never been done before, and so things have to be refined as we learn. Hopefully, this provides some useful insight into that refinement.

[Gl4r1ngPnD4]

Please make this a reality! My play space is a definitive rectangle. If I mapped out only square it would be too small an area. As it stands now, chaperone is constantly showing up as all I need to do is reach out in front of me to trigger it. I'd love to orient the front of my play space to shorter wall. Rarely do I need to walk side to side.

Originally posted by gevarre:

Actually, that is only partially correct and the whole reason for the problem. After tracing the room bounds, the editing screen has a white rectangle showing the edge of the traced space, a green rectangle showing the playable area, and a white arrow showing default forward.

Yes, you can rotate the green playable area when you edit, but the problem is, if I rotate it 90 degree so that the forward arrow faces the long direction of the rectangle, both sides of that green rectangle are now out-of-bounds. The only way to get this orientation to work is to reduce the sides of the rectangle until it becomes a square. I've just lost half my playable area.

What we need is to be able to rotate just the arrow, not the play space, re-orienting forward independently of anything else. It currently seems rather arbitrary, and I can't see a reason for it. All the testing I've done points to people instinctively wanting to move forward and back a lot more than side-to-side. Putting the forward direction facing the shortest distance doesn't really make much sense, at least not to me.

Interestingly, the illustration in the setup showing the guy pointing at his computer shows the computer at the long end of a rectangular room. Unfortunately, he's going to be a bit confused when what was implied as forward gets rotated left or right.

Honestly, it would be so much easier if instead of the instructions saying "point the controller at the computer", it just said, "point the controller in the direction you want to be forward", or, "point the controller in the direction you would like to face when playing games". Right now your setup tries to interpret the player's intentions (if the computer faces this way, then they must want to do this...) rather than explicitly asking the player what they want to do.

And if you really want to improve the system, it would be great to have an option in steam that says, "Always orient VR games in the direction the player is facing when the game starts." Just like when the dashboard comes up. Go ahead and snap that to 90-degree increments relative to the capture volume if you want. I, for one, instinctively always put on the headset facing forward and then start the game. Additionally, as has been said before, at any point during the game I should be able to bring up the dashboard and click on a rotate left or right button to re-orient the game to my preference, but now I'm just dreaming.

I know you had to start somewhere, but of course part of what makes this all so exciting is that it's never been done before, and so things have to be refined as we learn. Hopefully, this provides some useful insight into that refinement.

[uncle_graffy]

I too would love to be able indicate forward direction during room setup.

[omega]

I wish you could /FORCE/ the rotation, at users "own risk" ie: When you rotate the direction, even if the bounds in one side is 1cm too small. But, it just changes red, and you're forced to leave it in the long side, even though 1cm difference is.. nothing.

[Fanible]

Originally posted by gevarre:

Actually, that is only partially correct and the whole reason for the problem. After tracing the room bounds, the editing screen has a white rectangle showing the edge of the traced space, a green rectangle showing the playable area, and a white arrow showing default forward.

Yes, you can rotate the green playable area when you edit, but the problem is, if I rotate it 90 degree so that the forward arrow faces the long direction of the rectangle, both sides of that green rectangle are now out-of-bounds. The only way to get this orientation to work is to reduce the sides of the rectangle until it becomes a square. I've just lost half my playable area.

What we need is to be able to rotate just the arrow, not the play space, re-orienting forward independently of anything else. It currently seems rather arbitrary, and I can't see a reason for it. All the testing I've done points to people instinctively wanting to move forward and back a lot more than side-to-side. Putting the forward direction facing the shortest distance doesn't really make much sense, at least not to me.

Interestingly, the illustration in the setup showing the guy pointing at his computer shows the computer at the long end of a rectangular room. Unfortunately, he's going to be a bit confused when what was implied as forward gets rotated left or right.

Honestly, it would be so much easier if instead of the instructions saying "point the controller at the computer", it just said, "point the controller in the direction you want to be forward", or, "point the controller in the direction you would like to face when playing games". Right now your setup tries to interpret the player's intentions (if the computer faces this way, then they must want to do this...) rather than explicitly asking the player what they want to do.

And if you really want to improve the system, it would be great to have an option in steam that says, "Always orient VR games in the direction the player is facing when the game starts." Just like when the dashboard comes up. Go ahead and snap that to 90-degree increments relative to the capture volume if you want. I, for one, instinctively always put on the headset facing forward and then start the game. Additionally, as has been said before, at any point during the game I should be able to bring up the dashboard and click on a rotate left or right button to re-orient the game to my preference, but now I'm just dreaming.

I know you had to start somewhere, but of course part of what makes this all so exciting is that it's never been done before, and so things have to be refined as we learn. Hopefully, this provides some useful insight into that refinement.

They still haven't changed this, I take it? I can't find any way to change the direction of the arrow. I have a rectangle as well (not a square) and SteamVR will not allow me to face the arrow the long way. It always defaults the arrow to creating a long width at my sides.

Like others have noted, I typically do more walking forward, than side to side or turning to the sides. Granted, it's not a HUGE deal once in most games. I just turn and then reorient the camera facing that way. It would be nice not having it autoload the direction I don't want to face, though, or having the loading screens always that way.

[H3g3m0n]

OpenVR Advanced Settings allows play space to be rotated at runtime. Also Chaperone Tweaker is great too and allows you to permanently set the rotation.

[nullptr]

Sorry to dig this out, but I have a similar problem. I can rotate the playspace in room setup (my space is nearly square shaped), and it works at first. The orientation indicator then points to the front. But when I close SteamVR and start it the next time, the orientation is back to pointing to the left by 90 degrees. Apparently the settings from the edited (turned) playspace in room setup are not saved.

[zarathustra.d]

4 years later, HOW IT THIS STILL NOT FIXED!

[zarathustra.d]

I'm really NOT sorry to necro this post, since I just spent hours of my day trying to fix this and still have no resolution. Rotating the play space 90deg in a RECTANGULAR room is NOT an option.

I tried to lie to the app by telling it the monitor is on EVERY other wall, it AWLAYS picks the damn SHORT axis, NEVER the long axis. So after over a dozen failed room set ups I'm getting a bit salty. I'd rather not punch my wall all day.

[ItsVRK]

You can edit it to point where you want using https://github.com/Xavr0k/ChaperoneTweak