[Gear VR] Monoscopic renderer issues

Hey man,

1)Working on the issue with the sphere reflections. Should make it in for 4.16.

2)I could be wrong but the issue you're seeing with the particles is that right now particles are transparent, and in 4.15 (experimental yay) translucent objects are not getting rendered in the far field (behind the camera). They also cause issues. If you want to make sure that's what is happening, please type vr.MonoscopicFarFieldMode 2 in the console, which will only show you the close cameras, and you'll see if the disparity is along the far plane. That issue will be fixed in 4.16.

3) I can see that you're running with a sky background. Please force it to not get rendered in Stereo by checking the "Force Mono" checkbox in Rendering for that object. To visualize which objects get submitted as a draw call to the close cameras, type vr.MonoscopicFarFieldMode 3. 

4) If you type "stat rhi", you'll see how many triangles you draw with mono activated (vr.MonoscopicFarFieldMode 1) and with mono deactivated (vr.MonoscopicFarFieldMode 0). Are you winning or losing triangles when activated?

5)Drawing transparent stuff on Adreno devices in 4.15 in monoscopic rendering when the transparent is in the background causes some issues due to the fact that the depth buffer isn't stored between framebuffer resolves (which is logical,on tiled renderers, but does not repro on Mali GPUs). Let me know if you have transparent content.

Thanks for trying mono :)

@rpalandri

Thanks for replying !

1) I don't believe there are any issues with those. I have them in both core and test projects. Core project crashes and test project (video above) doesn't. This is the original report: https://forums.oculus.com/developer/discussion/51114/gear-vr-4-15-1-monoscopic-renderer-crash-on-level-load

2) Yep, they sure are transparent (translucent and blend mode). I'll test that cvar.

3) Well, it's a skysphere and it's far away. Wouldn't it render in mono by default? 

4) I can't really test this, since my working/core project crashes when main level is streamed. There is no point testing on that test project.

5) I do and I am on Mali. Particles are transparent, 3D HUD is too (but it's not visible unless user activates it). I also have exponential fog. And I have quad plane in front of the camera with transparent masked material that is driven by the timeline to make fade in/out effect.

P.S. I can share my working project (that crashes) with you for testing. There is no way I can figure out what causes the crash.

Sooo, this is bizarre - I stripped project of everything so it could match test project. It's literally empty level now. And sure enough - game crashes when main level is done streaming and player is teleported (or not?) to that level.

#$%&!#* Unreal Engine 4...  :s

Are you switching levels when it crashes? There is a known crash in some cases when switching levels with gearvr and UE4 if you do not build with 'For Distribution' ticked.
Give that a try building "For Distribution" to see if the crash still occurs. It's really annoying for debugging when building like that but at least it would help find the issue.

aussieburgerVR said:

Are you switching levels when it crashes? There is a known crash in some cases when switching levels with gearvr and UE4 if you do not build with 'For Distribution' ticked.
Give that a try building "For Distribution" to see if the crash still occurs. It's really annoying for debugging when building like that but at least it would help find the issue.

Thanks for the tip. I built For Distribution, but now the app doesn't show up in the Android Home screen. And since it's not in the release channels, I can't launch it :/

P.S. I did Shipping build (but not set for distribution) and it still crashes. I get a message that my app closed unexpectedly.

Yeah you need to use an app like "QuickShortCutMaker":
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sika524.android.quickshortcut&hl=en
to make a shortcut to the app since it's manifest is set to be hidden in the app drawer ;)
(free and works great for testing your distribution build before you submit to Oculus ;) )

Shipping build also has "debuggable=true" in the manifest that causes the crash (at least for my level) so really needs to be "For Distribution"

@aussieburgerVR Unfortunately crashes even when running For Distribution build :/

ok then it's unrelated to the change level crash that occurs under some circumstances - good luck solving it :D