My main goal today was to record some videos of me testing out the VR headsets. Because all the VR stuff from Monday had been packed up, we had to set everything back up again and pick up from where we left off. Steven arrived towards the end of the morning class, and we started setting up at around 12:30.
Because the computers only had Vive's software installed and not the Oculus App , we decided to use the HTC vive headsets instead. The main difference between the Oculus and Vive was that we needed to have a wired connection to the computer in order to sync between them and the sensors still needed to be put in place.
We started by setting up the sensors, which had screw holes underneath that we could attach to tripods and position on each side of the play-space.
The process of connecting the Vive to the PC was slightly annoying, as we first had to plug them into a hub, which would then connect to the PC. This required quite a few cords. Despite trying our best to organise them in a clean fashion, the result was still quite messy.
Once everything was connected on the Vive's side of setup, we then had to organise the PC. This was where we ran into some difficulties, as we found some files that needed to be installed. Because this step required admin access, we could not make any further progress until a technician could come in.
While Steve emailed a technician to come and install the remaining software, I had to do something else in the meantime.
By the time I came back from Lunch, the technician had arrived and was starting to install the remaining software. Meanwhile, I decided to to have a go at installing the plugin I failed to install on my PC at home on Tuesday night.
Now that I had knowledge of what I did wrong yesterday, I was able to get a lot further into the process, even managing to download the plugin files and add them to Blender. Eventually though, I ran into another roadblock, as the action of actually transferring blender files to Unreal was blocked by the system administrator.
The only option I had left at this point was to make a new scene from scratch in Unreal, which was a little disappointing, as I wanted to have my Blender scene ready for the video. Because I hadn't used Unreal Engine since I installed it, it took a little while to adjust.
At this point, the HTC Vive had been ready for quite a while. However, because it was connected to a different computer, I had to close what I was currently doing and move onto the other one. Since I hadn't made too much progress on my current computer, this wasn't a problem for me.
Once I moved onto the other computer, I opened Unreal and set up a basic version of my Blender scene. I also opened OBS on the other screen so I could make a couple of recordings.
After that was done, I needed to get the scene working in VR. I was initially confused on how to do this, as the view from inside the headset was completely blank, and the option in Unreal to play in VR was grayed out. I tried to get it working on my own, but eventually I gave up and got some assistance from Steve.
The solution ended up being quite simple, as the only thing I needed to do was log into Steam and open up Steam VR. Once this was done, the headset finally started working, and the previously grayed out VR play mode finally became available.
I thought the best thing to start off with was to use Unreal Engine's default VR project. I found it quite awkward at first, since I hadn't used this exact headset before and hadn't used VR in years, but got fairly used to it after messing around for a while. I then took a small recording of me using each feature in the scene.
Lastly, I wanted to make a recording of me interacting with my custom scene. Upon pressing play and putting the headset on, the scale of what I had built immediately became obvious, which I found quite impressive. Less impressive however, was the fact that I couldn't teleport like I could in the template file.
This must've been something that needed to be programed into the file, but I didn't really know how to do this. Because it was pretty late at this point, and I had a feeling that getting things like teleportation working could potentially take a long time, I decided to just take a video of what I had and leave it there.
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