Horrible controls

[Vince Crusty [GPC]]

Very nice app idea, low budget space engine with trees and plants. The controls (i´m on Oculus) are horrible. I can´t figure out, how to do what i want to do. It´s like the app was designed for xbox pad and the controls are random mapped on the touch controllers. Free locomotion would be a big plus btw, Thanks!

[GreggBzz]

Unfortunately, I don't have an Oculus to develop on, but I've considered doing a more point and click style of interface. The controls are mapped to the Vive touchpad, if that helps. As for free locomotion, I'm thinking a vehicle for "orbiting" the planet, and flying low to the ground, will be an eventual update. Thank you for the feedback!

[Jesus-saved-my-life-and-soul]

It is only for vive as stated so I have to thank the devs it works on oculus and that they may update to snapturn by this weekend.

[tempestmichael]

It's not an Oculus or Vive specific issue. Just look at what From Other Suns did with their controls and copy it. You want more options than just basic teleportation. Folks in the VR community hate being limited to that.

[flexy123]

It is absolutely beyond me why some devs only do teleport without any locomotion It defies the idea of VR as a whole. How can you explore, or even become immersed,when you cannot move? Shame, since the idea of exploring a planet itself sounds good.

[GreggBzz]

For Exoplanet, in particular, smooth locomotion is more difficult because during the "blink" of the snap teleport, the terrain is procedurally generated. The geometry is tessellated, the planetary objects procedurally placed.. all in about 1/4 of a second. Additionally, the planet is round and we're transforming the planet under the player during each teleport, not transforming the player around the planet. In other words, we're rotating the planet under the players feet, not making the player fly around the planet. This is because in Unity, everything expects the word to be flat. Gravity, skyboxes and a host of other Unity tools and code work a lot better when the horizon is the horizon, up is up, and down is down. So instead of flying around the planet, we roll the planet under the player. Finally, the library that handles terrain transformations is highly integrated with the rest of the code, so refactoring it to accommodate smooth locomotion is no easy feat. If I had to start from scratch, I may have made some alternate choices. Now all that being said, I'm still working on this thing. Smooth locomotion is one thing I'm aiming to hack into it.

[Poison Dart Frag]

Can't you generate more of the terrain than what can be seen at any given moment, and then just limit the motion to the speed that it takes to generate the extra parts before they're reached?

[GreggBzz]

The next update will include free movement, and a few other cool things. It's pretty awesome in the Galaxy view. Planet side it works pretty well, although I'm doing a "refresh" of the terrain every 25 meters. I'm still sorting out a vignett and a few comfort options. Also, I've coded up some jetpack movement, which is pretty awesome. In a week or two this will be live.

[Poison Dart Frag]

Please make vigneting, snap turning etc optional; some people can handle smooth motion without any visual degradation just fine and it adds a lot to immersion.