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Problems with using WebBrowser plugin for Unreal Engine 4

NER34
Honored Guest

I want to have web browser in game. Web browser widget works fine in the editor (using Oculus Link), but after launching it to Oculus Quest 2 web browser widget shows only black screen that i can't interact with. After 2 days of searching i have 2 possible reasons:

 

1. This is a plugin problem. But I think it's strange, because UE doc says that web browser plugin supports Android devices.

 

2. I found some information in "Oculus for developers/Develop/Oculus Developer Policies/App Policies" "Apps That Facilitate the Installation of Other Apps". Based on this information I decided that Quest 2 device forbids getting data for web browser widget. That's why it cant draw a page and always shows black screen. (Maybe I misunderstood the meaning of this section, but the main idea is the same).

 

So, my question is what is wrong with web browser plugin. If there is no problems with device and development rules, then can I do something to make it work. If I cant, then is there another Unreal Engine 4 plugin that allows to create  web browser integrated into game.

21 REPLIES 21

dario.maciel
Adventurer

Aparently oculus forbid access to urls in this way. You can access mp4 files and have them played. You can download jpeg files and have them as textures but you cant access sites or other internet files

I have seen Unity apps open in game web browsers in a few recent apps so maybe they have changed this? Hoepfully so as Im also looking to integrate the Unreal web widget in game. Hopefully it is just a bug that Epic needs to fix. The internal Oculus browser is based on same Chromium code that Unreal browser is so cant see what the issue is here.

It's not a quest issue. it's an unreal issue, so it doesn't matter what Unity can do.

 

Good to know, so now its just a question of when/if Epic get round to fixing it...

Which app can access the web browser within game?  It allows the user to navigate freely across the internet?
The web browser of epic works on preview, so I really thinks its some kind of permission of Quest.
I tested accessing a mp4 from the web and it works, so its not an internet connection issue. Same goes for a jpeg. But in these 2 cases we are accessing a specific file format, not an html file.
The oculus browser does work, but I think they revoked this permission for their own app. Its possible, but they dont allow it inside a game. At least thats what I think.

TaKo_1513
Explorer

I'm not sure if this helps. But, I was able to play a game on my PC(keyboard and mouse) while using the Quest2 that definitely uses UE4 to operate. It's called Crayta. I used an app called Big Screen to operate the game while using the headset.

ConduitXR
Protege

Can someone at Oculus/Meta confirm that webpages are not allowed/accesible from within game? And if so the reason why? 

 

In Unreal we can whitelist the browser to only show a single URL therefore minimising security risks and any nefarious download attempts etc

I'm not sure why we have to keep saying this:

 

This has nothing to do with oculus. It's a bug in the unreal engine.

 

pro_zac
Heroic Explorer

I took a look at the Web Browser Widget plugin as someone else asked for help. I'm not able to get it working on device either. In RenderDoc I can see the widget doesn't attempt to render at all.

 

I'm not familiar enough with the internal workings of the Slate UI system to see where it's failing, but I expect the relevant class is in Engine\Source\Runtime\WebBrowser\Private\Android\AndroidWebBrowserWidget.cpp. Would need to figure out why the texture is not created and passed along to be rendered.

 

As stated above, this doesn't appear to be anything Oculus specific or URL specific. The browser widget simply doesn't render. If anyone has time / knowledge to debug, please post your findings. 

theoneonlykid2
Honored Guest

i know its been a while but this was a bug in ureal, it was supposedly fixed in 5.2 problem is Im using the oculus source branch, I was able to move over the 5.2 web browser plugin, which now renders but causes the game to crash when built. any suggestions or updates would be greatly appreciated.