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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogssingmetosleep (dark surreal narrative) UE4 VR
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Author Topic: singmetosleep (dark surreal narrative) UE4 VR  (Read 21438 times)
acatalept
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« Reply #40 on: January 24, 2015, 03:31:55 PM »

Thanks @Netsu! (slightly delayed response, I'm so bad at keeping this thread up to date...)

Unfortunately the prototype doesn't work very well on my crappy PC.

You're not alone -- I've been spending a lot of time trying to improve performance, targeting different levels of hardware, and doing what I can to help lower-level hardware not have a second-class experience.  Years ago I used to spend an inordinate amount of time struggling to tweak games to run on my affordable (and less-than-enthusiast-grade) hardware, and I always hated that I'd have to make so many sacrifices to visuals to get a playable framerate.  So I've been attempting a different tack: rather than just turning off effects as a late-stage afterthought, I've been experimenting with ways of actually changing the experience, challenging myself to work within the constraints of reduced performance, cutting out what's not necessary while maintaining the feel, and more importantly not letting any cracks show.

For example, one of the biggest performance gains, which carries the most obvious visual penalty, is completely turning off dynamic lighting/shadows.  I've gone down the road and back of doing what I can with static lightmaps, which can look outstanding with some work put into them...



... but static lighting build times and memory requirements (both for building during development, and for the player to simply load the lightmaps) are prohibitive with scenes this big, even when I break the world up into manageable chunks -- so dynamic lighting is my only realistic option.  But dynamic lighting has a *huge* hit on performance, especially when I add in realtime global illumination (which I hope I can get looking the way I want in the final experience, for those who have the hardware to handle it).

So for now, I have a sort of master lighting and time-of-day system set up that enables toggling dynamic lighting (including dynamic global illumination) and some other effects.  But when it's turned off, rather than just look like a cheapened, flat, overbright version of "what could be"... the experience takes on a rather different look...



... which attempts to sidestep the complete lack of any shadow information and uses only a single, uniform, omnidirectional sky light.  Compared to full dynamic lighting/shadows, the framerate on my dev system increases by anywhere from 75% to over a 100% gain.  This is particularly critical when targeting the Oculus Rift, which suffers from pretty severe nausea-inducing judder and latency any time performance even briefly falls below 75fps @ 1920x1080.  This has been my biggest hold-up in releasing a Rift DK2-compatible prototype (for those who have been waiting), which should now be ready very soon (sorry it's taken so long!).

There are some tradeoffs: the end result is even more stylized and unrealistic than the lit/shadowed look, and some sense of depth and scale is lost in some areas.  Though some of the much less expensive tricks in Unreal Engine 4's toolkit, such as light bloom and screen-space ambient occlusion, tend to give back some substantiality and texture...



And there are always other ways of strongly driving home the scale of the place when lacking vast shadows cast across the vista...



(note the distant figure next to the massive structure)

Updated video and playable prototype (with Rift DK2 support) on the way...
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Impmaster
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« Reply #41 on: January 24, 2015, 10:20:20 PM »

I liked your game, so I made a fan trailer of it!





yeah, it's a little weird to make a trailer of a game, but I can't draw, so this is like the equivalent of fan art.

Also, in the prototype, there's a few areas where shadows make it look like the floor is fully black, which makes it a little confusing.
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acatalept
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« Reply #42 on: January 24, 2015, 11:18:04 PM »

That's so cool, I'm really flattered!  And don't worry, I can't draw either Wink  Which is why all my "concept art" is basically in-engine prototyping: WYSIWYG.

And thanks for the note on the floors -- I honestly haven't gotten much feedback at all from people who've played the prototype (if anyone else out there would like to share their impressions I'd love to hear!), but I do take it all seriously.  This particular type of issue has me somewhat torn: on the one hand I absolutely don't want to alienate players, or make them so uncomfortable / disoriented that they'd turn it off and stop playing.  But on the other hand, I *do* want to keep people somewhat disoriented, somewhat out of their comfort zone, balanced on that knife edge between complacency and deterrence...

Thanks for sharing!
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Gavan
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« Reply #43 on: January 25, 2015, 05:49:38 AM »

This looks hella cool.
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acatalept
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« Reply #44 on: January 30, 2015, 01:37:35 PM »


Targeting lower-spec computers with DirectX 10 integrated graphics

After playing extensively with eye-candy in the beginning, then struggling to get acceptable mid-spec performance for quite a while now in pursuit of a fluid Oculus Rift experience, I've finally had a chance to test the standard non-VR experience on the lowest spec video hardware I have access to: an i5-2500k with integrated HD3000 graphics that only supports DirectX 10 (Unreal Engine 4 is intended to target DirectX 11+ on PC, so a number of visual quality and feature sacrifices are made when running on DX10).

The last time I tested on this machine, with *everything* turned down/off, I got about 3fps.  Now I'm able to get between 25-40fps at 1680x1050, which for this type of non-twitch experience, will hopefully be acceptable to most of the more casual players without dedicated video cards.  Though I'm cheating with 2.40:1 letterbox bars, so it's really only outputting 1680x700 resolution.  Though I'm also rendering to a half-scale render target before upscaling to the screen resolution, so it's *really* only rendering 840x350.  So basically VGA.  But it's playable!

[NOTE: This is a crap, too-dark screenshot, but this test was done far away from my dev machine.  Should be an easy fix to make some postprocess tweaks to compensate for the DirectX 10 shader limitations.]



I hope to do more work in this area to maintain reasonable framerates as well as achieve visuals that are in line with the higher-spec look, so that people with lower-spec hardware don't get a second-class experience (though it's tough to avoid a somewhat last-gen, DirectX 10 "look" on DX10 hardware).

Who knows, I may even get it running acceptably on Android/iOS before all this is done -- I love having a playable demo of my games on my phone to show people ;)
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TheWing
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« Reply #45 on: January 30, 2015, 01:52:22 PM »

This is goddamn awesome! Loving the lights, really nice design and layout, now I only wish I had Oculus Rift..
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acatalept
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« Reply #46 on: January 30, 2015, 02:11:45 PM »

This is goddamn awesome! Loving the lights, really nice design and layout, now I only wish I had Oculus Rift..

Ha, thanks!  I just wanted to clarify that the Rift is completely optional, and I playtest most often in 2D on a standard monitor Wink

But I'm designing with VR in mind from the beginning, rather than as a tacked-on afterthought, to provide a first-class experience for both VR and standard displays.
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TheWing
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« Reply #47 on: January 30, 2015, 02:13:05 PM »

This is goddamn awesome! Loving the lights, really nice design and layout, now I only wish I had Oculus Rift..

Ha, thanks!  I just wanted to clarify that the Rift is completely optional, and I playtest most often in 2D on a standard monitor Wink

Yeah, I figured that, but still I'd need that Rift, I've been kinda waiting for stuff like this for it P:
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acatalept
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« Reply #48 on: January 31, 2015, 07:18:55 PM »

Here's a quick demo of the "medium-spec" visuals in motion:

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oldblood
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« Reply #49 on: January 31, 2015, 08:20:19 PM »

Is there a playable version of this by chance? Since DK2 came out my DK1 has been gathering dust because it feels outdated. Would love to experience this if there is something playable. Besides I'd love to test it on the high-end visuals as this looks gorgeous.
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acatalept
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« Reply #50 on: January 31, 2015, 08:39:51 PM »

An updated playable prototype (with DK2 support) is forthcoming... "soon" Wink  When that will be I'm not sure: I still need to finish a few final niceties like a friendly UX for switching resolutions, quality level, windowed/fullscreen (especially to facilitate quality/framerate adjustment on the fly while in VR).  But I've hit the performance target which has been my long-standing holdup the past few months...

Cross your fingers!
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schoenepauck
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« Reply #51 on: February 07, 2015, 11:01:31 AM »

Hey, just glanced over your screenshots, looks mouth-watering! Can you build for macs with UE4? I'd love to experience this on my DK2....
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« Reply #52 on: February 07, 2015, 11:08:13 AM »

Looks very impressive.  I will be following this.
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acatalept
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« Reply #53 on: February 10, 2015, 10:57:55 AM »

Hey, just glanced over your screenshots, looks mouth-watering! Can you build for macs with UE4? I'd love to experience this on my DK2....

Thanks!  Since I'm building this with Unreal Engine 4, I can deploy to Mac (and Linux btw) from Windows pretty painlessly, but as I don't have access to a Mac I won't be able to test/confirm that it works.  Any interest in helping test a Mac build before I post it for download? Wink
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schoenepauck
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« Reply #54 on: February 10, 2015, 01:18:24 PM »

Hey, just glanced over your screenshots, looks mouth-watering! Can you build for macs with UE4? I'd love to experience this on my DK2....

Thanks!  Since I'm building this with Unreal Engine 4, I can deploy to Mac (and Linux btw) from Windows pretty painlessly, but as I don't have access to a Mac I won't be able to test/confirm that it works.  Any interest in helping test a Mac build before I post it for download? Wink

Sure thing, I'd be glad to help. Mail me if you're ready, and I'll give your next prototype a whirl.
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acatalept
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« Reply #55 on: February 20, 2015, 08:43:26 AM »

More sightseeing -- many more at http://acatalept.com/singmetosleep/#screenshots

Still trying to get the right look out of completely dynamic lighting/shadows for such a huge world:





















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oldblood
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« Reply #56 on: February 20, 2015, 08:53:12 AM »

So gorgeous. How long does it currently take to walk through? Looks massive.
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acatalept
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« Reply #57 on: February 20, 2015, 10:04:43 AM »

So gorgeous. How long does it currently take to walk through? Looks massive.

That's... an interesting question ;)  Massive it is, particularly in VR where the huge scale is really sold.  This particular... scene... is roughly 2km x 2km.  And I have a rather slow walking speed that realistically fits the VR experience (though it currently feels unnecessarily slow in non-VR), although I'm working on a way to progressively move faster in the final game for the impatient (of all things, I don't want that to be a turn-off) who prefer to skim over the story and just bang it out in "tourist mode"...

But the experience isn't strictly linear, and there's a WIP mechanic to retrace your steps, or more precisely to sort of step backwards on your current timeline and take a different branching path, while the effects of your previous trespasses remain.  Still working on making this playable and intuitive and completely in-world, as I want the final experience to remain accessible but GUI-free to be more of an interactive, non-linear film than a traditional game.

And there's quite a bit more to the world, more places to go after this place, than what I've shown so far, but that will have to wait...

So to answer your question: it depends :P  Just don't go into the labyrinth...
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« Reply #58 on: February 20, 2015, 10:10:38 AM »

I feel like a skating function would be nice, instead of the traditional "hold shift to move faster". It looks like a nice place to ice skate.
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« Reply #59 on: February 20, 2015, 10:17:55 AM »

uhnnf this is gorgeous
it reminds me of some stuff robot pencil did, very cool feel
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