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Unreal Engine 4.15 Now Available, VR Improvements Include Menu, Number Pad and PSVR Aim Controller support

This Epic Games has released the latest iteration of its popular videogame development software Unreal Engine 4.15.

The last version was only released in November 2016, and since then the studio has been pumping out the preview builds, adding experimental new features whilst ironing out the bugs and glitches. Unreal Engine 4.15 continues Epic’s support of virtual reality (VR), finalising additions like support for PlayStation VR’s Aim controller along with general VR Editor improvements.

PlayStation Aim Controller

Epic’s updated the Quick Menu and Radial Menu in the VR Editor, improving usability and functionality whilst giving them a new look. A new Number Pad UI has been added allowing developers to quickly enter numbers from zero to nine as well as negative and decimal values in text fields

An experimental addition to 4.15 comes in the form of Monoscopic Far Field Rendering which provides a performance boost by only rendering distant objects once. As it is experimental for the moment Monoscopic Far Field Rendering is only supported on mobile platforms for now.

For the full list of features head to the Unreal Engine blog for a concise rundown including support for Nintendo Switch. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Unreal Engine, reporting back with the latest updates.

VR

  • New: Updated the GoogleVR SDK to version 1.01.

  • New: Exposed “Is HMD Connected” to blueprint. This means that HMD hardware is ready to use. UE4 may or may not be using the HMD now.

  • Bugfix: Fixed rendering of Canvas tiles in stereo mode to be rendered for both eyes. This fixes the rendering of the background behind various stats shown by the STAT console command.

  • Bugfix: Fixed threading issue on Oculus Touch controllers, which could cause jittering in some circumstances.

  • Bugfix: Fixed an assertion when using Oculus stereo layers with MSAA, due to binding an unresolved depth surface.

  • New: Added analytics event to Vive HMD initialization.

  • New: Updating Oculus SDKs

    • Oculus PC SDK 1.10.0

    • Mobile SDK 1.0.3

    • Audio SDK 1.0.2

    • Platform SDK 1.10.0

  • Added a missing render target clear when using a VR hidden area mask and a post processing material.

  • Added in a new CVar vr.SteamVR.UsePostPresentHandoff, which defaults to 0. When set to 0, we do NOT use the SteamVR Post Present Handoff, which costs some performance GPU time. When 1, we use the call, and get some extra GPU performance. However, this call is NOT safe for scenes that have frame-behind GPU work, like Scene Capture components and Widget Components.

    • For users that were using 4.14.1, and seeing a GPU timing improvement, that behavior is now off by default.  You can re-enable it by setting vr.SteamVR.UsePostPresentHandoff on your project to get it back.  Be aware that SceneCaptureComponents or WidgetComponents may cause async reprojection in SteamVR to fail in that case.

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Oculus Issues Update on 1.12 Release, Currently Going Through Expanded QA Testing

As of late, it hasn’t been the smoothest for Oculus with its most recent software update 1.11 – aimed at solving users tracking issues with multi sensor setups for Oculus Touch – seemingly causing more problems than it fixed. Recently Nate Mitchell, part of the company’s PC team, released an update on Oculus’ forums giving some details about the progress being made.

Noting the issues users had been reporting when using three or more sensors Mitchell wrote: “Our #1 priority right now is addressing the new tracking issues some users are experiencing in 1.11 without reducing the impact of 1.11’s tracking quality improvements. We’re also fixing a few new tracking-related bugs that have come in through community and support channels.” Adding: “At this point, all of these tracking changes together are too significant for a hotfix, so instead our focus is getting them thoroughly tested and shipped to everyone as part of the 1.12 release ASAP.”

Oculus Touch

Plans are still in place for a February release of 1.12, but currently there’s no fixed date for release. This is due to Oculus putting the update through extensive QA testing ensuring it again doesn’t create more problems than it fixes.

The post also details an early preview program Oculus is looking into, enabling users ‘opt in’ and receive updates prior to an official launch. Mitchell said it’s: “something we’ve wanted to do for awhile, but has been on the back-burner behind other features.” The aim is to rectify issues like the current ones experienced early, with further details due to be released soon.

There will also be a small hotfix focused on matchmaking services, improving multiplayer matches, but this will be separate from the 1.12 update.

As Oculus releases further details on its next update VRFocus will let you know.

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YouTube Duo SoKrispyMedia Takes Immersive Style To The Next Level With VR

YouTube Duo SoKrispyMedia Takes Immersive Style To The Next Level With VR

With major 360-degree media companies like Blend Media garnering interest from executives involved with media platforms like TheLADBible and Maker Studios, it’ll be no surprise when the format takes a stranglehold on a large chunk of video sharing networks. Slowly but surely, YouTube tastemakers are utilizing 360-degree video and VR on their creative platforms and taking their creativity to the next level. The latest example is an intriguing 360-degree video that takes advantage of a particular YouTube channel’s unique style with the perfect marriage of creativity and technology.

Sam Wickert and Eric Leigh make up SoKrispyMedia, a channel known for videos that break down walls by bringing digital and physical art elements into the real world, and they’ve released a cool new video.

Considering they’ve emulated VR interactions in some of their work, them utilizing the 360-degree format and VR was essentially an inevitability. In “Internet Surfer”, Sam and Eric meld their creative ideas with assistance from Reality One and Wevr to take Eric on a physical tour of the internet. Due to some wonky happening, Eric gets physically pulled into YouTube and hilarity ensues as he stumbles into the lives of hilarious impressionist Jamie Costa, the action intense Corridor Digital crew, video magician Zach King, and fashionista Lindsey Rem. There’s even a portion of the video with animation from Cyanide and Happiness.

Hopefully, creations like this aren’t just one-offs, as many of the creators involved in this video would be a boon to the 360-degree media ecosystems. Even beyond that, it’s clear that humorous content translates to the medium even for more popular entities like the Always Sunny In Philadelphia crew’s recent video that lets you become a total badass (nothing goes right, of course). Fingers crossed that we get much more comedic content across various networks in the very near future.

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DiRT Rally PlayStation VR Update Now Live

Last month UK developer Codemasters announced it would be implementing virtual reality (VR) support for its racing title DiRT Rally for PlayStation VR. At the time it didn’t give a specific date on when that would happen, today it’s now arrived.

The studio has ensured PlayStation VR owners get the same experience as the PlayStation 4 version, with every game mode available including rallycross and hill climb. As previously reported, a new Co-driver Mode as also been added so that rally stages can be played with a friend. Using the social screen option for PlayStation VR means the second player can use a DualShock 4 controller to give pace notes directions to the driver.

DiRT_Rally_PSVR_launch_screen_6a

There are two different options for those that have either bought DiRT Rally or haven’t. A DLC upgrade is available for existing players at £9.99 GBP on the PlayStation Store or as a new ‘DiRT Rally PLUS VR Upgrade’ retail version through Argos or online.

Checkout the new trailer below and for any further updates on DiRT Rally VR, keep reading VRFocus.

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Watch a Ford Mustang Racing Though the Streets of Paris in Visualise’s Recreation of C’était un rendez-vous

Celebrating the Ford Mustang’s sales success in Europe, virtual reality (VR) studio Visualise, and Ford’s creative agency, GTB, have produced a recreation of the classic 1976 cult film C’était un rendez-vous (Rendezvous).

To create the 360-degree experience RE Rendezvous and to emulate the originals camera view, Visualise built a custom rig for the camera, mounting it 12 inches from the ground right in front grill. And to ensure the camera and footage were vibration free the company bolted the rig directly to the cars chassis.

Ford RE Rendezvous_screenshot

The team couldn’t recreate the film exactly however, as some roads no longer existed, and some of the smaller details in the original needed to be improvised. The scene at Sacre Coeur required the production team to temporarily move hundreds of tourists, and filming on live roads including the Arc du Triomphe meant that post production work had to include a large amount of difficult clean-up of other branded cars and the blurring of viewable number plates.

Will McMaster, Head of VR at Visualise and director of the project commented: “The project was enormously challenging, some even said it was impossible. We were tasked with recreating legally a film which was shot illegally and dangerously in 1976, which meant we had to a number of factors to consider. Shooting these kind of driving shots in one of the busiest cities in the world wasn’t an easy task but we are over the moon with the final result.”

Checkout the video below, and for further Visualise projects, keep reading VRFocus.

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Vive Tracker Dev Kits Start Shipping, Sees 2,300 Applications

vive tracker

HTC’s anticipated Tracker peripheral for the HTC Vive is unsurprisingly proving popular with the VR developer community.

A few weeks back HTC opened up applications for developer kits for its new device, which is expected to launch fully sometime in Q2 2017. Companies working on VR content can sign up to request free units. HTC was offering 1,000 dev kits to help kick start the ecosystem, but it’s seen more than double that number of applications. 2,300 of them, to be precise.

The first of these applicants to be approved should be getting their kits this week — they started being sent out last week — giving them likely a few months’ headstart on developing content before launch. To apply, developers had to fill out a form that asked them how many units they would like, and to detail the projects they were working on. In a blog post, the company noted that it is committed to reviewing every single application for a kit, and is keeping the process open for longer than they originally projected to do so.

The Vive tracker is a peripheral that’s essentially designed to be attached to real world objects, bringing them into the virtual world. We’ve already seen it used for baseball games, fire fighting simulations, and even attached to smartphones to create a rudimentary form of local multiplayer in VR. The device has huge potential to open up the types of experiences that are possible in VR.

Paired with Valve’s new base station prototypes, which will be shipping to developers later this year, we could start seeing vastly more immersive VR experiences on Vive very soon. HTC is also set to release a new headstrap with integrated audio for the Vive around the same time as the Tracker.

It’s not yet clear how much the Tracker is going to cost. GDC is right around the corner, though, and we’ll hopefully get some answers there.

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Vive Tracker Dev Kits Start Shipping, Sees 2,300 Applications

vive tracker

HTC’s anticipated Tracker peripheral for the HTC Vive is unsurprisingly proving popular with the VR developer community.

A few weeks back HTC opened up applications for developer kits for its new device, which is expected to launch fully sometime in Q2 2017. Companies working on VR content can sign up to request free units. HTC was offering 1,000 dev kits to help kick start the ecosystem, but it’s seen more than double that number of applications. 2,300 of them, to be precise.

The first of these applicants to be approved should be getting their kits this week — they started being sent out last week — giving them likely a few months’ headstart on developing content before launch. To apply, developers had to fill out a form that asked them how many units they would like, and to detail the projects they were working on. In a blog post, the company noted that it is committed to reviewing every single application for a kit, and is keeping the process open for longer than they originally projected to do so.

The Vive tracker is a peripheral that’s essentially designed to be attached to real world objects, bringing them into the virtual world. We’ve already seen it used for baseball games, fire fighting simulations, and even attached to smartphones to create a rudimentary form of local multiplayer in VR. The device has huge potential to open up the types of experiences that are possible in VR.

Paired with Valve’s new base station prototypes, which will be shipping to developers later this year, we could start seeing vastly more immersive VR experiences on Vive very soon. HTC is also set to release a new headstrap with integrated audio for the Vive around the same time as the Tracker.

It’s not yet clear how much the Tracker is going to cost. GDC is right around the corner, though, and we’ll hopefully get some answers there.

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SLIVER.tv and ESL to Launch 360° Experience at Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2017

Next week the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) World Championship will be held in Katowice, Poland featuring Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, StarCraft II and League of Legends. For the event ESL and SLIVER.tv are collaborating to launch a virtual esports stadium experience for fans worldwide.

With IEM Katowice 2017 expected to surpass last year’s 113,000 attendees in the Spodek Katowice stadium, many more fans will be able to watch the matches through live streams and via virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMDs). SLIVER.tv’s live interactive stadium is set to feature dynamic lighting that is synchronized and changes as the game is played, with viewers able see their avatars in the 360° VR stadium, interact with other live viewers through emoji’s, view each other’s gamer profile and access live stats, replays and scores in real-time.

Intel Extreme Masters

Ulrich Schulze, Vice President Pro Gaming at ESL, said in a statement: “The IEM World Championship is one of ESL’s most prestigious events and is coming back bigger than ever in 2017 with competitions taking place over two weekends for the first time. We always aim to echo the passion and energy of our fans in the stadium with our online viewing experiences and are excited to extend the feeling of being in the crowd to the IEM VR livestreams.”

“We’ve had an amazing product development partnership with ESL thus far and are thrilled to bring to market the first virtual stadium experience in 360° VR,” said Mitch Liu, co-founder and CEO of SLIVER.tv. “We’re excited to take this first step towards making esports spectating into a highly social, live, and engaging experience to CS:GO and LoL fans worldwide. This is an integral part of our mission to transform the interactive esports entertainment industry.”

To watch the proceedings in VR and 360-degrees, visit the SLIVER.tv website or download the SLIVER.tv Android and iOS apps and use Google Cardboard. The SLIVER.tv app can also be downloaded for Samsung GearVR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

The Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) World Championship 2017 will take place from 25th – 26th February and 3rd – 5th March. For any further updates on SLIVER.tv, keep reading VRFocus.

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Oculus Expands QA Testing For Rift 1.12 Patch, Proposes Early Preview Program

Oculus Expands QA Testing For Rift 1.12 Patch, Proposes Early Preview Program

After a small delay, Oculus’ much anticipated Rift update hit earlier this month, though for some it brought more issues than fixes. The company is looking to change that very soon, and this time without any other unforeseen problems.

Nate Mitchell of Oculus’ PC VR team recently took to the Oculus forums to give a brief update on the status of the next release, 1.12. He stated that the company’s current priority was to fix these new bugs, which many have cited as height tracking issues, “without reducing the impact of 1.11’s tracking quality improvements.”

The issues have mainly been ascribed to setups that use three or more sensors for room scale VR.

Oculus is still looking to release the update this month, but isn’t prepared to give a final date yet. “That’s because 1.12 is going through an expanded QA and testing process to make sure we haven’t overlooked any new issues,” Mitchell said. “As soon as it’s ready, we’ll ship it.”

Hopefully expanded QA will prevent any further issues with future updates, although Mitchell also revealed Oculus is considering an “early preview program” in which Rift owners would be able to test official updates before they fully launched, a little like how Sony offers beta testing for its system firmware updates on PlayStation 4. “This is something we’ve wanted to do for awhile, but has been on the back-burner behind other features,” Mitchell explained. “Hopefully, this should help us gather more community feedback and testing to help catch issues like this in the future.”

An update on this scheme should be coming “in the next few weeks.”

A small hotfix for online experiences is also on the way very soon, though it won’t have any updates to tracking included. With any luck, this update will allow Rift and Touch owners to finally put these tracking issues behind them.

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Oculus Expands QA Testing For Rift 1.12 Patch, Proposes Early Preview Program

Oculus Expands QA Testing For Rift 1.12 Patch, Proposes Early Preview Program

After a small delay, Oculus’ much anticipated Rift update hit earlier this month, though for some it brought more issues than fixes. The company is looking to change that very soon, and this time without any other unforeseen problems.

Nate Mitchell of Oculus’ PC VR team recently took to the Oculus forums to give a brief update on the status of the next release, 1.12. He stated that the company’s current priority was to fix these new bugs, which many have cited as height tracking issues, “without reducing the impact of 1.11’s tracking quality improvements.”

The issues have mainly been ascribed to setups that use three or more sensors for room scale VR.

Oculus is still looking to release the update this month, but isn’t prepared to give a final date yet. “That’s because 1.12 is going through an expanded QA and testing process to make sure we haven’t overlooked any new issues,” Mitchell said. “As soon as it’s ready, we’ll ship it.”

Hopefully expanded QA will prevent any further issues with future updates, although Mitchell also revealed Oculus is considering an “early preview program” in which Rift owners would be able to test official updates before they fully launched, a little like how Sony offers beta testing for its system firmware updates on PlayStation 4. “This is something we’ve wanted to do for awhile, but has been on the back-burner behind other features,” Mitchell explained. “Hopefully, this should help us gather more community feedback and testing to help catch issues like this in the future.”

An update on this scheme should be coming “in the next few weeks.”

A small hotfix for online experiences is also on the way very soon, though it won’t have any updates to tracking included. With any luck, this update will allow Rift and Touch owners to finally put these tracking issues behind them.

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