Actually Looking Into VR! (Deirdre Lazy)

I've realized these past few weeks that I just really, really, don't want to research VR in UE. So Last night I sat down and forced myself to watch a recorded livestream put out by the Unreal Engine Youtube channel. I took notes while watching as well. Pro-tip: watch informational videos on 1.25x or 1.5x speed to save yourself time. It certainly made watching a video that's about an hour long easier to watch (especially since my patience was wearing thin).

Link to the video: VR in UE
Link to my notes on the video: Getting Started With VR in UE

Thoughts after watching the video:
Even though this video wasn't actually the most basic video I could have started with to begin looking at VR, I did learn quite a bit. There were some terms I wasn't familiar with that I think I should look into to become versed in using UE.


Throughout the video Zac Parrish mentioned how Robo Recall did X-thing to optimize performance and such. It got me thinking that I should invest some time to play VR games to see what they do to be good VR games, not just good games.

For one, there's a lot more to consider with VR than I first thought. For instance, there was a lot of performance optimization that I didn't know I needed to consider. When I've created games in Unity, I wasn't paying much attention to the optimization, rather, I was just concerned with submitting a game for an assignment.

The hardware used was a factor I didn't realize would impact the performance of the game either. Different headsets function slightly different from each other, which, I definitely look into if/when I make my VR game/concept.

I didn't expect to learn about the control commands to check for performance; mainly because I didn't realize that was a thing you could do. So that was a handy tip. Now I know what I need to look up in order to find more control commands.

Overall, I really do need to do more research into just working in a game engine. There was so much terminology I needed to look up to understand what was said. It was enlightening, and exciting. When I was learning Unity, it felt like a drag, and that I needed to know how to code to even make a character move. With UE blueprints, the visual system is a lot easier on development while I learn more about the coding aspect. Part of the excitement also comes from exploring a new tool that I am learning for myself, rather than a class. I'm looking forward to learning and developing more in UE over my co-op.

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