How to steer your spaceship in VR? | Unreal Engine Devlog

[@AlexClarkeGame]

What are people's favorite VR space steering games?

[@brylski6]

Not space. But VTOL VR has the best steering in my opinion. And I am commenting it because it could probably also be used in Space.

[@AlexClarkeGame]

Yeah, VTOL VR is great! I bought it specifically to research for this game

[@brylski6]

@@AlexClarkeGame that is really great news! Keep up the good work :D

[@EthanFilms]

@@AlexClarkeGame vtol vr is so bad ass!! If I could figure out that rotate-objects-around-the-player type locomotion, I could get my vr game advancing. I have been struggling for some time now, and i think my game has potential.

[@AlexClarkeGame]

@@EthanFilms Space flying is definitely a tricky thing to do! We've still got a lot of work to do with ours still!

[@Skeffles]

There is some fantastic attention to detail in this! It was great seeing just how much better performance was when you moved that rotation code to C++.

[@AlexClarkeGame]

Thanks! Yeah, it was great seeing that performance bump for us as well! We had announced we were going to release a demo of the game when it was in blueprints, and so was very happy that moving it into C++ meant we could release a functioning demo!

[@Talamander]

Keep the devlogs coming!

[@nichegames9590]

First time seeing this. Looks good.

[@AlexClarkeGame]

Thanks :)

[@xraidev]

Why is it easier to move all the other objects rather than just the ship? Genuinely curious

[@AlexClarkeGame]

Yeah, so there's a couple of reasons that we chose to move all the other objects. One reason is that it could mess up our physics interactions inside the ship with moving everything around that much Another problem is we're moving really fast, so we'll go outside the map size limits for Unreal Engine We have lots of lights inside the ship, if the ship was movable they would be movable and that would be pretty bad for performance There isn't an easy way of changing gravity direction if we rotate the ship (as in making sure the gravity direction is always down in the ship when rotating the ship) None of these problems are necessarily deal breakers but we felt that overall it would probably be easier to do it this way than the other way

[@SomeKindOfMattias]

@@AlexClarkeGame hmmm, I think you might run into problems with this approach and make things cumbersome , I don’t think movable Iights are so bad with mesh distance fields etc (see epics talk about dynamic lighting in fortnite). Also dynamic lights adds a lot of potential cool uses. Try out light propagation volumes and you get nice indirect lighting from a directional source like the sun.Origin rebasing solves some problems. You could use physics impulses to simulate forces inside the cockpits. PhysX substepping is great for stuff like vehicles. Not sure about the new chaos physics. Anyway, super interesting stuff and awesome cockpit. Working on space game myself so I’ll follow with interest :) (Also be sure to use hierarchical instanced meshes for the asteroids, but I’m sure you’re already are :)) (This might be worth checking out www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/sixdof-movement)

[@AlexClarkeGame]

Definitely some useful things to look into, thanks! I have programmed it in a way that changing how we do it is very simple, if we learn that this isn't the best method Using this method of moving all other objects isn't that uncommon though, I believe outer wilds does a similar thing I am quite new to the engine so still learning :)

[@jonassandstedt]

@@AlexClarkeGame was also worried about this solution. But good that you could "easily" change it in case it doesn't work out. Imagine it could be quite hard to implement multiplayer in the future if you ever decided to go that route. Regarding the map size. Isn't it possible to teleport the ship AND the environment back in 1 frame to work around that issue? Doesn't work in Unreal so I have no idea. Else maybe scaling everything down, if it's about how long a variable could be. (Instead of traveling 1 000 000 000 m, you travel 100 m. But then you need to scale settings for physics and shadows and everything. Well. Maybe not a good idea either 😛.

[@schoolhomevrtechnologyassi6286]

@@jonassandstedt aaaiiiieee tHat made my head explode multi player with player centric world translation AAAIIIIEEE! TREE FALLS IN THE FOREST! AAIIIEEE!

[@schoolhomevrtechnologyassi6286]

Wow, Why would you move every object in a scene rather than the camera and player THROUGH the scene? ??? Thats so interesting,. I guess in multi player game where the multi pkayers are all on the same giant ship.. that could make a lot of effecient sense,! INTERESTING. Is there a sample project to peruse? I am a reverse enginering kind of learner, it helps enormously. THANK YOU!

[@AlexClarkeGame]

Unfortunately there isn't any sample project, and I don't know of any open sourced games that are doing this. I know that the outerwilds does it but that's the main one I know of.

[@stardast4576]

Underrated

[@AlexClarkeGame]

Thanks!

[@Kate_Hanami]

0:41 nice theory you have there Einstein that's relatively how you want things to go?

[@zakrzew3d]

Hi Alex, how I can create Interaction lihgt switch in VR ?

[@obsidianskin9502]

greetings from miziziziz... discord :D

[@AlexClarkeGame]

Hey, and thanks for your comments on the discord! Is really appreciated

[@MintRipple]

Can u play this on vr with the version on Itch?

[@AlexClarkeGame]

I think you found the VR demo from the discord :)

[@MintRipple]

@@AlexClarkeGame Lol yes forgot I made this comment

[@eggtts4985]

Will it be on the oculus quest

[@kassiacomposer]

Like a pancake