VR Support

[KingArth]

Just out of pure curiousity...is there ever gonna be support for VR? 🥲

Ps.: love you guys, this looks amazing

[Anupanbis]

I really hope so too

[Goomes]

Maybe later on if we are able to do a spin off project or something along those lines. In the conversations I have had with the team, this would require a lot of backtracking and remaking many systems in order to accomplish, so it's not as easy as just adding it, or turning it on unfortunately.

[KingArth]

Ciao Goomes, thanks for replying!

Yeah i can imagine, totally understand...still, nice to daydream about it 😝

I was playing the other day with War Dust on VR and was thinking about the fact that a Battlefield-like game for VR is missing so much, and if something so awesome as OHD was to end up in VR it would bring SO many people in it (especially given it's free) and i think revolutionize the genre & VR platforms.

Can't wait for the release anyway! :)

[JeQ]

Hopefully it is built on system at some point if this gonna be platform for all war games at future. Imagine if this would be coh where VR players are commanding real time desktop players. VR players watches scene above ground, and only see enemies and buildings which desktop players has tagged. Or opposite, desktop players commanding VR players.

[TJ]

i wonder if vr could be used with mouse and keyboard. Use your headset as sort of a Track iR. never seen it before or tried it but i'm interested in if it would work.

[Goomes]

That might work. Honestly don't know enough about how that works with UE4 to say.

[TJ]

Originally posted by Goomes:

That might work. Honestly don't know enough about how that works with UE4 to say.

It's cool to see devs so active in the discussion pages. Love the concept of the game so far and can't wait to see the end product! :D

[NitroViper]

Id play a VR version

[Michelangelo]

Originally posted by Goomes:

Maybe later on if we are able to do a spin off project or something along those lines. In the conversations I have had with the team, this would require a lot of backtracking and remaking many systems in order to accomplish, so it's not as easy as just adding it, or turning it on unfortunately.

yessss please!!

Thanks for leaving the "door open" for a future implementation.

Please bear this in mind or at least estimate this for a future development because VR is an actual radical simulation improvement as:
- Guns are handled naturally with real 1:1 movements between Reality:In-Game (no more guns "stuck" in the front of the view
- Real aiming as real as having the virtual weapons in your hands and aiming as it should be...not with a mouse but using your real pulse and bringing the sights to your eyes
- Real scale, real 3D view of the world around you...no more a Flat 2D limited view as even if the game is rendered in 3D it is limited by a monitor with a flat 2d hardware screen

As today... nothing beats VR in realistic simulations.... it is a massive upgrade for the entire experience of playing

so yeah

+1 for VR support

Instant buy when it is added or when it is officially confirmed

[slydog43]

+1 for VR support. Don't really see myself playing non VR games anymore. Will have to try with VorpX as a last resort.

[Tino]

When planning a VR version, please go the extra mile for proper motion controller support. Because a shooter with such an realism appeal would benefit a ton from it. Gunstock, manual reloading mechanics, using a virtual sight with your eyes, throwing hand grenades, capture flag with your hand and other stuff, much much more immersive. Onward had a quite strong hardcore PCVR community in the past until the devs destroyed it with a Quest downgrade. I think there is a lack of shooters with good Unreal graphics in VR, hopefully we'll see things improviing with the PSVR2 soon.

[Allwynd]

Originally posted by Teejay:

i wonder if vr could be used with mouse and keyboard. Use your headset as sort of a Track iR. never seen it before or tried it but i'm interested in if it would work.

How does VR even work? I don't know, because I don't own one. What happens if you use it in a game that doesn't support VR? Does that enhance the experience at all or make it worse?

[Tino]

Originally posted by Allwynd:

Originally posted by Teejay:

i wonder if vr could be used with mouse and keyboard. Use your headset as sort of a Track iR. never seen it before or tried it but i'm interested in if it would work.

How does VR even work? I don't know, because I don't own one. What happens if you use it in a game that doesn't support VR? Does that enhance the experience at all or make it worse?

Basically there are a few options:
1) flat cinema mode: you'll see a big floating canvas plate in front of you which works like a TV and the output on it is still 2D, but with the feeling of a certain size, for example 6 meters wide like in a cinema
2) 3D cinema mode: the floating plate has now depth, but scaling of objects is not 1:1, depending on the size of the plate in front of you
3) full VR mode: You'll see the world in real 3D around you, often with the feeling of life-sized objects if not scaled (e. g. diorama), perception of depth like in real life. That is what all native VR games do and gives the true immersion.

I think for all options it is possible to track the head rotation (3DOF), where you look, rather it's 2D or 3D image output even if it does not always make sense. So you wouldn't need a mouse to look around basically. On the PSVR2, the integrated eye tracking is even used as an aiming aid in Horizon COTM.

Praydog's Unreal injector will be able to use option 3) for a full 6DOF VR experience, including motion controllers (your hands actually holding the weapon). But it is also possible that a mod just uses the standard mouse and keyboard controls if needed but you see the world in real 3D, which is already more immersive. But interacting with a weapon like in real life adds up even more to realism.

[Nostrildumbass]

Originally posted by Goomes:

Maybe later on if we are able to do a spin off project or something along those lines. In the conversations I have had with the team, this would require a lot of backtracking and remaking many systems in order to accomplish, so it's not as easy as just adding it, or turning it on unfortunately.

I'm curious to read a few examples of what needs to be backtracked/remade, can you elaborate? I'm no professional in the industry, but I have put several years (on and off) of effort into a VR FPS in UE as I love both VR and UE. I'm interested in hearing the roadblocks you think you have there. There's a UE VR Expansion plugin that should make it a very feasible addition. You should theoretically be able to make a copy of your current "player" and add what is needed from the plugin to use it as a VR player. This includes roomscale tracking and hand tracking. Then you can easily add overlap capsules to the character model where you would drop weapons and gadgets to holster and grab them.

Other minor changes needed would be to unbind actions like crouch and prone from buttons and wire that all up to reference the headset's height (not too big a challenge). All that non-VR stuff can then be tossed out from the VR player if it's not tied to the base class/bp.

If your weapons have components and animations for things like the charging bolt, those shouldn't take much of a rework either (more so just some additions that shouldn't interfere with their pancake non-VR function).

Vehicles is the one area I could see would need a major rework (more so additions than rework, I think), but as a temporary short term solution to bring VR in, you could just make them drivable/pilotable with analog stick and button inputs instead of interactable controls.

Would love to hear more and see if there's any advice I can give.

[Goomes]

Originally posted by Nostrildumbass:

Originally posted by Goomes:

Maybe later on if we are able to do a spin off project or something along those lines. In the conversations I have had with the team, this would require a lot of backtracking and remaking many systems in order to accomplish, so it's not as easy as just adding it, or turning it on unfortunately.

I'm curious to read a few examples of what needs to be backtracked/remade, can you elaborate? I'm no professional in the industry, but I have put several years (on and off) of effort into a VR FPS in UE as I love both VR and UE. I'm interested in hearing the roadblocks you think you have there. There's a UE VR Expansion plugin that should make it a very feasible addition. You should theoretically be able to make a copy of your current "player" and add what is needed from the plugin to use it as a VR player. This includes roomscale tracking and hand tracking. Then you can easily add overlap capsules to the character model where you would drop weapons and gadgets to holster and grab them.

Other minor changes needed would be to unbind actions like crouch and prone from buttons and wire that all up to reference the headset's height (not too big a challenge). All that non-VR stuff can then be tossed out from the VR player if it's not tied to the base class/bp.

If your weapons have components and animations for things like the charging bolt, those shouldn't take much of a rework either (more so just some additions that shouldn't interfere with their pancake non-VR function).

Vehicles is the one area I could see would need a major rework (more so additions than rework, I think), but as a temporary short term solution to bring VR in, you could just make them drivable/pilotable with analog stick and button inputs instead of interactable controls.

Would love to hear more and see if there's any advice I can give.

I probably won't be able to offer the most technical answers to this as it is a bit out of my wheelhouse, and I am mainly repeating what some of the other leads have explained to me (who do have experience with these things) so please keep that in mind as I answer below.

The main things that I think would be a large hurdle is basically backtracking on almost everything pertaining to the player controller and weapon animations, as if you want a true VR experience those all would need to be handled by the VR controls and headset as opposed to the current implementation on mouse and keyboard. So for example, if you actually want to be able to physically reload a rifle (as in manipulate the magazine and all of the actions on the weapon itself) vs. just have the animation play in front of your eyes when you press a button, that would all have to be remade and set up for VR—this would likely include tasks such as completely re-rigging every single weapon to be able to be used in that context, which would be a very large task in and of itself. Beyond that, how all of the UI, the menus, and so on are created would probably need to be looked at and revised as well, not to mention just overall optimization and performance factors in general (perhaps even networking modifications/changes). I suppose this topic mostly comes down to how far you want to go with the VR implementation though right, because if you are willing to put up with designs and systems that are built for a more traditional PC gameplay experience and can put up with a good amount of jank then I am sure some of these corners can be cut, but I still don't think that would mean those are simple additions or changes to just put in all things considered.

I would also add that some of the things you are mentioning are starting to brush up into much greater topics about Unreal Engine and game development projects as a whole and how they are made, such as the use of third party plugins, which is something that we pretty much explicitly do not do (only on rare occasions) in favor of making our own stuff in-house (and there are a number of reasons for this, but that's another topic). The notion that any of this can be "easily" done or that something is "minor" for a project this scale is also just not accurate at all and is grossly underestimating the amount of work it would take, and as a general rule of thumb is usually not true when it comes to software as a whole—maybe if you have a fairly barebones project where you aren't potentially brushing up against a myriad of other systems and programming work some of these things could be "simple", but that's almost never how it goes, especially this far into a project which was pretty much my main point when I initially answered this thread (and is even more so the case over 2 years later). In addition, if it was that simple to do, don't you think you'd see a lot more VR implementations out there right now? It's not like VR is new technology that everyone hasn't had at their disposal for years now, and even when it is something that is added onto projects it's often pretty bad and feels like a complete afterthought.

I've also gone ahead and sent this post to one of the other devs on the team that I think can answer better, so maybe he can also further elaborate on this topic better than I can.