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leewrigh7
Participant
October 13, 2014

Can anyone test/play direct to rift?

I decided to start learning the ropes in Unity a while back. I installed the demo of Unity Pro and followed a few tutorials, adapting them for use with the Rift but found developing with it a poor experience. I randomly get black screens etc when using the play button and sometimes have to restart unity. I was unable to get the project to 'play' directly to Rift without first building an .exe.

I decided to leave it a for a while while these types of issues were ironed out.

My question is, can anyone use the 'play' directly to rift reliably? If not, what sort of sequence/work-flow do you find is best/most productive.

Do you test without the rift for the most part? if so what camera/control/view workarounds do you implement in your scene?

Any hints appreciated

Lee.

PS In case anyone asks, I've a Win7 desktop with a 970 GTX which I will use for playing/testing VR but also use a late 2013 MacBook Pro sometime for dev. In case OS makes any difference.
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    8 replies

    peterept
    Up and Coming
    October 14, 2014
    Direct Mode does not work with Unity yet.
    Also since SDK 0.4.2 you can only have 1 game window view (you used to be able to have multiple so you could drag one onto your extended Rift monitor and keep one on your editor).
    You need to turn off Direct3D 11 (Under player settings).

    I wrote a summary blog here:

    http://talesfromtherift.com/getting-started-with-unity-and-oculus-rift-sdk-0-4-0/

    My work flow now tends to be to test in the editor (game view on my main screen), then CTRL-B to quickly build an EXE and run on the Rift. Or, I drag my Game window over to the Rift monitor and maximise it.

    Peter
    Check out my Unity VR development blog: http://talesfromtherift.com @peterept
    cybereality
    Inspiring
    October 14, 2014
    Direct Mode works with Unity. Just try the Tuscany demo and click "DirectToRift.exe".
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    peterept
    Up and Coming
    October 14, 2014
    I assumed he meant "Direct HMD Access to Rift" vs "Extended Desktop to HMD" from inside the Unity Editor.

    I have no problems building from Unity and using DirectToRift.exe.
    Check out my Unity VR development blog: http://talesfromtherift.com @peterept
    cybereality
    Inspiring
    October 14, 2014
    Ah, yes. I think I understand the question now.

    In that case, you will probably want to build the project in order to test it fully.
    AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV
    Ausinspiration
    Up and Coming
    October 15, 2014
    I finally decided to start using Unity now that I have DK2 and ran into the same issue.

    The unity integration guide is misleading in respect to this, because it says it is better to use the rift in direct mode, then when it comes to explaining how to use Unity it says something like "Drag the game window on the Rift monitor".
    If you are running in Direct Access mode, the Rift doesn't have its own display, so apparently the instructions assume you are using Extended Desktop Mode.
    cybereality
    Inspiring
    October 15, 2014
    I think the idea is that you can use Extended mode for quick game testing, and then Direct mode when you actually want to see how the final build is going to look. But I guess you would ideally be testing both throughout to make sure nothing breaks mid-development.
    AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV
    PatHightree
    Up and Coming
    October 15, 2014
    I think you can replace ideally with practically.
    When you're working on the VR experience of your game, you want experience to be identical to the final product.
    Especially if you're debugging oculus related gfx bugs.

    @peterept
    Regarding that blog post, how should I interpret the version numbers (Unity and OVR SDK) you advise to use?
    Are those exact versions a golden receipe, or are can I use higher versions (excluding beta's).

    A sticky post in this forum specifying which versions to use would be VERY beneficial for many users.
    ColinB
    Inspiring
    October 16, 2014
    Just to say that I always use Direct.
    After a build you are given both exe's. I've actually never used Extend, except once to try it out. To me it's annoying as hell.
    Direct seems so much better and easier to use..on a build exe. that is.
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