Before we begin

To ensure Quest 2 will work correctly with your project, you must make sure that your project is ready for VR. This means your character or pawn has motion controller components and a camera that has Locked to Hmd ticked.

For this guide, to make this easy, we have created a new project using the Virtual Reality template as it is completely configured to play with a virtual reality headset.

With only small tweaks we can launch this project using the Meta Quest 2.

You will also need Android SDK, NDK and ADB setup for Unreal Engine. Click here to read the official Unreal Engine documentation on setting up Android SDK, NDK and ADB in your UE5 editor.

Setting up your Project for Quest 2

Enabling the Plugins

To make sure the Quest 2 will work correctly with your VR project, you need to enable the Oculus VR Plugin.

In the main editor window, click Edit and Plugins to open the Plugins window.

Next, in the search bar type Oculus. On the right side make sure the Oculus VR plugin is enabled.

Configuring the Project Settings

To allow Quest 2 compatibility and best performance, we need to change a few of the project settings.

To access these settings, in the main editor window click Edit and Project Settings.

Input Settings

On the left side find and click the Input category. On the right side, scroll down until you find Default Touch Interface.

Click the dropdown and then click clear. This will set the value to None.

Rendering Settings

Next we need to change the rendering settings.

On the left side scroll down and click the Rendering category.

On the right side scroll down to the VR category and disable Mobile HDR.

Android Build Settings

Lastly, in the Platforms category on the left, click the Android sub category.

On the right side scroll down and click the Configure Now in the large red banner.

Next, scroll up and find the Minimum SDK Version. Set this value to 29.

After that, set Target SDK Version to 29.

Lastly, scroll down and open the Package for Oculus Mobile devices category.

Add two options and select Oculus Quest 2 and Oculus Quest as shown in the image below.

Packaging and Launching your Game

The last step required to run your Unreal Engine 5 project on your Quest 2 is to click the platforms drop down and select your Quest 2 in the options.

If your headset doesn’t show in the list, make sure it is plugged into your PC and is powered on.

Your project should then start packaging and building for the Android Quest 2 platform.

Once this process has complete your project should immediately start up on your Quest 2 headset.

Conclusion

Your project is now compatible with standalone virtual reality on the Quest 2 headset!

More optimization might be required to reach 72 or 90 frames per second. To reach these performance goals there are many resources online:

Official Unreal Engine optimization documentation: https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/TestingAndOptimization/

Unreal Engine performance guide by GPUOpen: https://gpuopen.com/unreal-engine-performance-guide/

Official Unreal Engine virtual reality performance and optimization guide: https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/SharingAndReleasing/XRDevelopment/VR/DevelopVR/ContentSetup/

The post How to play your UE5 game on your Quest 2 Headset appeared first on Couch Learn.

Prerequisites

To follow this guide we recommend you know the basics of Unreal Engine 4, using the widget UI system and basic knowledge of blueprints and actors.

This guide uses the UE4 VR Template built into Unreal Engine 4.

To follow along exactly to the guide you will need to create or use a project that was created using the VR Template.

Click on the links below to learn about these topics:
– Creating and using Widgets in Unreal Engine 4
– Blueprint basics in Unreal Engine 4

Creating the Widget

The first aspect of this system is the creating the widget itself.

The widget we are creating is a main menu style widget that has a vertical list of buttons.

If you already have a completed widget you can skip to the “Displaying the Widget” section.

Firstly, right click in the content browser and create a new widget blueprint.

Creating the Menu Title Text

The first widget component to add is a text block that is set to the anchor shown below.

Then, align the text to the top and automatically adjust it’s horizontal size to the maximum size of the widget.

This is done by setting the slot position values shown below.

The last step with the text is to set the font size to 50 and the justification to center as shown below.

Creating the Button Container

We will now create the main container that will store our interactive buttons.

To do this, firstly create a vertical box widget component.

Then, add as many buttons as you require to the vertical box.

This stacks the buttons and equally spaces them out in the vertical box.

The final widget hierarchy now looks like this:

Adding Functionality

To make sure our buttons are working correctly in game, we simply add “On Clicked” events to each button and print string nodes with the button’s number as the input.

This will print the value on the screen once interacted with the VR controllers.

Displaying the 3D Widget

Creating the Actor

To place our newly created widget into the world, create a new actor.

For this guide we named this actor “VRWorldObject”.

Adding the Widget Component

To add a widget into this actor, create a new “Widget” component.

To show the Widget component’s settings, click on the component in the components menu below the add component button.

In the widget class drop down box select the widget we created earlier. In this case we selected “VRUIWidget”.

Internally the widget is rendered into a texture. To make your widget draw with a high resolution, set the Draw Size X value to 1920 and the Y value to 1080.

Lower values will still work but will display lower resolution and pixelated widgets in the game world.

Now in the viewport of the blueprint editor you can see your widget rendered.

Now your widget actor is complete! Drag this actor from the content browser into any level to show the widget in the world.

Interacting with the 3D Widget

By default world space widgets inside of actors cannot be interacted like standard widgets.

To allow interactions, firstly open the BP_MotionController blueprint.

Inside the BP_MotionController blueprint, add a new “Widget Interaction” component to the HandMesh skeletal mesh component.

This makes sure that the interaction component will follow the movement and the rotation of the VR controllers.

Then, click the Widget Interaction component to show it’s settings and adjust the interaction distance to however far away you want the players to interact with the widgets.

Now in the viewport you can see the widget interaction arrow displaying the interaction distance and the direction it is pointing in.

This can be adjusted by changing the component’s location and rotation values.

To show a laser pointer like line where the controller is interacting, simple enable the “Show Debug” checkbox in the Debugging section of the WidgetInteraction component.

Lastly, to differentiate between the two controllers the engine uses the “Pointer Index” variable on the widget interaction component.

In the Invert Scale on hand mesh to create left-hand section of the MotionControllerBP blueprint add a “Set Pointer Index” node and set the value to “1.0” as shown below.

Interact with the VR Controllers

The BP_MotionController blueprint has the interaction enabled but cannot click or select any widgets.

To achieve this, firstly right click in the event graph of the BP_MotionController and create two new custom events named “TriggerInteract” and “TriggerRelease”.

If you haven’t used custom events in Unreal Engine 4 click here to learn how to use custom events in your game.

To trigger a click / select event in our Widget Interaction component, right click and get the Widget Interaction reference.

Then, click and drag from the Widget Interaction pin and create a Press Pointer Key function.

Change the key to Left Mouse Button to allow the “TriggerInteract” event to click and release the left mouse button interaction on the widget.

Repeat this for the “TriggerRelease” event but use the Release Pointer Key function instead.

Finally, in the MotionControllerPawn blueprint call our new event from the “LeftGrab” and “RightGrab” input actions.

The finished input blueprint nodes in the MotionControllerPawn should now look like this.

Your basic VR widget interaction system is now complete!

Demonstration

Project Files

Conclusion

Now your project has basic VR compatible widget interaction!

We are planning to create many more VR guides over this year. If you have a specific topic you would like a guide for, feel free to contact us.

If you are interested in more Widget Interaction and 3D widget features in Unreal Engine 4, here are some links for further reading:

Click here to read the 3D widget Unreal Engine 4 documentation.

Click here to read the Widget Interaction Unreal Engine 4 documentation.

The post How to make VR Interactable UI Widgets in Unreal Engine 4 appeared first on Couch Learn.

Why does SteamVR start with my UE4 project?

Unreal Engine 4 has many Virtual Reality plugins enabled by default once you start a new project.

This is done to get many developers seamlessly working on their projects without any initial setup or complicated menus.

Disabling these VR related plugins will prevent SteamVR loading when you launch your project.

Disabling the SteamVR plugin

Firstly, click the Edit button in the top left of the Unreal Engine 4 editor and then click the Plugins button at the bottom of the drop down window.

Then, once the Plugins menu has opened, scroll down on the left side categories until you find the Virtual Reality section.

Once you have found this button, click it to show the Virtual Reality plugins on the right.

In this new right side menu, scroll down until you see the SteamVR plugin.

Disable the SteamVR plugin by unticking the Enabled section.

To allow these changes Unreal Engine 4 needs to restart, press Restart Now to restart the editor.

Conclusion

After these steps the editor should restart and SteamVR will no longer start when you start the Unreal Engine 4 editor with your project.

All future projects created do not keep these settings.

All new projects make will need to go through these steps if you are not using Virtual Reality in your project.

To read more about Unreal Engine 4 plugins, click here to see the full Plugin documentation.

To easily purchase and download Plugins for Unreal Engine 4, click here to go to the Unreal Engine 4 Marketplace.

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