A presentation I have been doing about making VR games and experiences in UE4.

1. Luis Cataldi & Andy Hess - Epic Games
MAKING
VR GAMES & EXPERIENCES
IN UNREAL ENGINE

2. VR Learning Resources in the Learn Tab

3. VR Learning Resources in the Learn Tab

5. On-ramp to exploring VR in Unreal Engine

6. VR Learning Resources in the Learn Tab

7. The latest VR info and news is most often in the Release Notes - Link

8. New Features
Performance Improvements
Platform Additions
Bug Fixes
Enhancements
Changes

9. VR Learning Resources for Unreal Engine:
Docs:
• Getting Started With VR
• UE4 VR Index Page
• VR Best Practices
• VR Cheat Sheets
• Oculus Quick Starts
• GearVR Quick Starts

10. VR Learning Resources for Unreal Engine:
Video:
• Integrating the Oculus Rift into UE4
• UE4 Support Stream - Developing for VR
• 2015 UE4 - VR and Unreal Engine
• Unreal Engine 4 Training Streams

11. VR Learning Resources for Unreal Engine:
Presentations:
• Nick and Nick – Going Off the Rails: The Making of Bullet Train
• Lessons from Integrating the Oculus Rift into UE4
Links:
• Tom Looman’s - Getting Started with VR in Unreal Engine 4
• Sam Deiter - 10 VR tips for Unreal Engine

12. Education Community VR for UE4:
Mitchell McCaffrey’s - Mitch VR Labs
Mitch's VR Lab - an Introduction
Mitch's VR Lab - Look Based interaction
Mitch's VR Lab - Simple Teleportation Mechanic
Mitch's VR Lab - Introduction to SteamVR
Mitch's VR Lab - Simple Head IK
Mitch’s UE4 Forum Post

13. Education Community VR for UE4:
Carlos Coronado - VR Olive FPS Controller
Carlos’s UE4 Forum Post
Olive VR Locomotion: Movement
Olive VR Locomotion: Shooting
Olive VR Locomotion: Menus
Let’s take a look at Carlos’s Look Based Locomotion for Annie Amber

14. Before we get much deeper into Unreal
Engine...
What are Mitch, Carlos, (and we) solving for?

15. One of the biggest issues for working in
VR is Motion/Simulation Sickness.

16. How is it caused?

17. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality_sickness
Sensory conflict theory believes that sickness will occur
when a user's perception of self-motion is based on
incongruent sensory inputs from the visual
system,vestibular system, and non-
vestibular proprioceptors, and particularly so when these
inputs are at odds with the user's expectation based on
prior experience.

18. Five typical causes of Motion/Simulation Sickness in VR
Read more about it
1. Non-forward movements
• No unnatural movements
2. Awareness of Vection
• When a large part of the visual field moves, a viewer feels like
he has moved and that the world is stationary
3. The feeling of accelerations
4. Too much camera YAW
5. Helped by adding a static reference frame

19. Education Community Tips to Reduce
Motion/Simulation Sickness
Extra Credits - Simulation Sickness
Offpeak Games - 5 Design Techniques to Reduce Simulator Sickness
GDC - Designing to Minimize Simulation Sickness in VR Games
VR Best Practices, Eliminating Motion Sickness - Power of Play 2015

20. Education Community VR for UE4:
Mitchell McCaffrey’s - Mitch’s VR Game Template
Jun 2014 UE Forum Post of VR Game Templates
Space Shooter Template
First Person Template

21. UE4 VR Locomotion Techniques
Teleport Mechanic by Mitchell McCaffrey
Mitch's VR Lab Ep03 - UE4 - Simple Teleportation Mechanic
Mitch's VR Lab Ep04 - UE4 - Advanced Teleportation Mechanic

22. UE4 VR Locomotion Techniques
Look -Based Locomotion/Interaction by Carlos Coronado
MIND: Path to Thalamus in the UE4 and VR.
Annie Amber

23. Things we CAN DO in Unreal Engine to
improve VR Games and Experiences

24. You MUST maintain framerate
For the VR experience to feel smooth, your game needs to run on 75 hz (Oculus DK2) or even 90
hz. (HTC Vive and Oculus CV1) depending on the device. To see the current framerate type in
“stat fps” or “stat unit” (for more detailed breakdown) in your console when running the game.

25. Use UE4’s VR Performance Profiling Tools
To capture a single frame with GPU timings press Ctrl+Shift+, or type in “profilegpu” in the
console. This command dumps accurate timings of the GPU, you will find that certain
processes are a heavy burden on the framerate (Ambient Occlusion is one common example)
when using VR.
The GPU Profiling & Performance and Profiling docs are a good place to learn about profiling
your game.

26. VR Instanced Stereo Can Help
The latest 4.11 release introduces Instanced Stereo Rendering, check the video below for a comparison video of
how that works.
“Basically, we’re utilizing hardware instancing to draw both eyes simultaneously with a single draw call and
pass through the render loop. This cuts down render thread CPU time significantly and also improves GPU
performance. Bullet Train was seeing ~15 – 20% CPU improvement on the render thread and ~7 – 10%
improvement on the GPU.” – Ryan Vance.
To enable this feature in 4.11
and above, go to your Project
Settings and look for
“Instanced Stereo” under the
Rendering category.

27. Disable Heavy Post-Processors
Due to the demanding requirements of VR many of the advanced Post Processing features that you normally
use should be disabled. To accomplish this you will need to do the following in your level.
•Add a Post Process(PP) volume to your level if there is not already one there.
•Select the PP volume and in the Post Process Volume section enable the Unbound option so that the settings in the PP volume will
be applied to the entire level.
•Expand the Settings of the Post Process Volume and then go through each section and disable any active PP settings by enabling
that property by clicking on it and then set the value from the default, usually 1.0, to 0 to disable the feature.
•When doing this you will not need to hit every section and set all the properties to 0. Instead first disable the really heavy hitting
features like Lens Flares, Screen Space reflections, Temporal AA, SSAO, and anything else that might have an impact on
performance.
•While a lot of the features are disabled by setting things in your .INI this ensures that nothing will happen to performance if
someone deletes the .INI by mistake.

28. Things to keep in at the front of your mind:
LOD's and aggressive culling are a must to ensure that you are
hitting your VR performance targets.

29. Known issues and possible workarounds:
Parallax Mapping
Parallax mapping takes Normal mapping to the next level by accounting for depth
cues, Normal mapping does not. A Parallax mapping shader can better display
depth information, making objects appear to have more detail than they do. This is
because no matter what angle you look at, a Parallax map will always correct itself
to show you the correct depth information from that view point. The best use of a
Parallax map would be for cobblestone pathways and fine detail on surfaces.

30. UE4 – Lighting for VR
Dimmer lights & colors can help reduce simulation sickness.
Use Static Lighting over Stationary or Dynamic.
Make sure your Stationary / Dynamic Lights do not overlap.
Baked lighting is the best option for VR.
If using Dynamic Shadows only have one shadowing light.
Use Stat LightRendering to see current lighting cost.
Profile, Profile, Profile

31. Fake shadows Wherever You Can!!
Using things like fake blob shadow drop to simulate dynamic shadows are a good
general rule in order to keep VR project running at frame.
Blob shadow example. Image by Eric Chadwick

32. UE4 – Effects for VR
Mesh based VFX work the best for VR.
Camera Facing particles do not hold up well in VR on their own.
The Dither Temporal AA Material Function can make Opacity masked objects look
like Translucent ones.
Local Space rotation does not look correct in VR.

33. UE4 – Environments for VR
Reflection probes instead of screen space reflections.
Again… Texture Blob shadows are a cheap alternative to dynamic shadows.
The ** Merge Actor Tool ** can help cut down on Static Mesh draw call
without having to do work outside of UE4.

34. Some very important things we all need
to know about Unreal Engine.

35. The Unreal Engine
Framework

36. The Unreal Engine Framework
GameInstance
GameMode
Pawn Class
HUD Class
PlayerController
Class
GameState
Class
PlayerState
Class

37. The Unreal Engine Framework
GameInstance
GameMode
Pawn Class
HUD Class
PlayerController
Class
GameState
Class
PlayerState
Class
The GameMode is the definition of
the game.
● It should include things like
the game rules and win
conditions.
● It also holds important
information about:
○ Pawn
○ PlayerContoller
○ GameState
○ PlayerState

38. The Unreal Engine Framework
GameInstance
GameMode
Pawn Class
HUD Class
PlayerController
Class
GameState
Class
PlayerState
Class
The Pawn class is the base class of
all Actors that can be controlled by
players or AI.
● The Pawn represents the
physical location, rotation,
etc. of a player or entity within
the game.
● A Character is a special type
of Pawn that has the ability to
walk around.

39. The Unreal Engine Framework
GameInstance
GameMode
Pawn Class
HUD Class
PlayerController
Class
GameState
Class
PlayerState
Class
A PlayerController is the interface
between the Pawn and the human
player controlling it.
● The PlayerController decides
what to do and then issues
commands to the Pawn (e.g.
"start crouching", "jump").
● Putting input handling or other
functionality into the
PlayerController is often
necessary.
● The PlayerController persists
throughout the game, while the
Pawn can be transient.

40. The Unreal Engine Framework
GameInstance
GameMode
Pawn Class
HUD Class
PlayerController
Class
GameState
Class
PlayerState
Class
The GameInstance is a class who’s
state persists switching of levels,
game modes, pawns etc. Where
classes like GameMode or
PlayerController are being reset
and data stored in those classes is
removed.

41. The Unreal Engine Framework
GameInstance
GameMode
Pawn Class
HUD Class
PlayerController
Class
GameState
Class
PlayerState
Class
A PlayerState is the state of a
participant in the game, such as a
human player or a bot that is
simulating a player. Non-player AI
that exists as part of the game
would not have a PlayerState.

42. The Unreal Engine Framework
GameInstance
GameMode
Pawn Class
HUD Class
PlayerController
Class
GameState
Class
PlayerState
Class
The GameState contains the state
of the game, which could include
things like the list of connected
players, the score, where the
pieces are in a chess game, or the
list of what missions you have
completed in an open world game.

43. The Unreal Engine Framework
GameInstance
GameMode
Pawn Class
HUD Class
PlayerController
Class
GameState
Class
PlayerState
Class
The HUD is the base object for
displaying elements overlaid on the
screen. Every human-controlled
player in the game has their own
instance of the AHUD class which
draws to their individual Viewport.

44. Object
Actor
Pawn
Character
Base building blocks in the Unreal Engine
Any object that can be placed into a level
Subclass of Actor and serve as an in-game avatar
Subclass of a Pawn that is intended
to be used as a player character

45. CharacterMovementComponent
Pawn
Character
Default Pawn
Wheeled
Vehicle
CapsuleComponent
SkeletalMeshComponent
Etc.
VehicleMovementComponent
SkeletalMeshComponent
PhysicsHandle
Etc.
SpectatorPawn
DefaultPawnMovementComponent
StaticMeshComponent
CollisionComponent, Etc.
Controller
1-to-1 Relationship

46. How about programming
interactivity for VR?

47. Programming VR Interaction with Blueprints
Blueprints in Unreal Engine is a complete visual scripting system based on the
concept of using a node-based interface to create interactions from within Unreal
Editor.

48. Programming VR Interaction with Blueprints
Learning Blueprints through Content Examples

49. Hey!! We need AUDIO for VR too!!

50. UE4 – Audio for VR
Ambient Sound Actors in VR
Ambient Sound Actor can be used for
many purposes such as ambient
looping sounds and non-looping
sounds. Generally, the Ambient
Sound Actor conforms to the real
world where the closer you are to a
sound, the louder it will appear.

51. UE4 – Audio for VR
Sound Properties
You can assign a sound asset from
the Details panel by selecting an
asset from the Sound settings drop-
down menu or by highlighting a sound
asset in the Content Browser and
clicking the button.

52. UE4 – Audio for VR
Attenuation Properties
Attenuation is the ability of a sound
to decrease in volume as the player
moves away from it.
It is advisable to use Sound
Attenuation objects whenever
possible, if for no other reason than
to give broad control over the
settings for many Actors.

53. UE4 – Audio for VR
New: Stereo Spatialization
3D spatialization is now possible for
stereo audio assets.
The 3D Stereo spread parameter
defines the distance in game units
between the left and right channels
and along a vector perpendicular to
the listener-emitter vector.

54. UE4 – Audio for VR
Audio Volume
Audio Volumes allow you to control
and apply various sounds in your
level as well as provide an avenue
to create compartmentalized audio
zones where you can control what is
heard inside and outside of the
volume.

55. Complete state of the art suite of AI Tools.
Additional toolsets in Unreal Engine to enhance VR and
bring life to your experiences.

56. Additional toolsets in Unreal Engine to enhance VR and
bring life to your experiences.
Complete set of tools for Animation Retargeting

57. So What’s Next?

58. Go download Unreal and start
making your game today!