- Jul 13, 2022
- 3 min read

Head Mounted VR - Ureal Engine VR Plugin Announcement

Project description

HeadMountedVR is our first announced project! This plugin has being developed for the Unreal Engine. The main goal of the plugin is to achieve advanced level of the VR physics interactions. This project provides content for simple and flexible VR development which can be easily set up.

Features

New VR Player class

Whole new player pawn class was developed especially for VR. It has a completely new movement which was written from scratch to fit the VR concept. There was huge research to reduce motion thickness. Player’s camera function was redesigned. Down below there are some key features of the new player class.

VR Player collision

Player collision has an ability to adapt to the player's height and follow the camera during the movement in the real world. Moving in room scale makes collision behave as expected. Collision will not pass through the walls. Instead it will react to all obstacles.

Head Mounted VR - adaptive teleport height for Unreal Engine 4/5 — Adaptive teleport height

Head Mounted VR - VR Player collision stairs behavior for Unreal Engine 4/5 — VR Player collision stairs behavior

Head Mounted VR Player collision separates when player needs to reach something. (Unreal Engine 4/5 plugin) — VR Player collision separates when player needs to reach something

Head Mounted VR. VR Player camera collision for Unreal Engine 4/5 — VR Player camera collision

VR Movement

With new collision behavior smooth movement arrived. Project also supports teleportation and an ability to customize the player’s turn. Smooth and snap turns are supported.

Head Mounted VR. VR Player Smooth movement for Unreal Engine 4/5 — VR Player Smooth movement

Footsteps sounds for VR Player

Plugin comes with a variety of footsteps sounds. Sound will play depending on the surface type the player steps on or falls on. It is also possible to play a voice line for in game dialogs.

Head Mounted VR. VR Player Footsteps sounds for Unreal Engine 4/5. — VR Player Footsteps sounds

VR Main menu and pause menu

Player can spawn with main menu status or spawn pause menu by holding a button on a motion controller.

Head Mounted VR. VR Menu for Unreal Engine 4/5 — VR Menu

VR Hand class

Player’s hands are fully physically based and like in player class there was a huge research on immersion, collision and interaction with objects.

Head Mounted VR. VR physics Hands for Unreal Engine 4/5 — VR Hands

Fully physically based

There was a huge attention paid to the hand physics behavior. How would the hands behave if they were stuck? How to feel the weight of the objects? What solution can help us avoid physics errors? Answers on all these questions were found.

VR Hand Collision (Each finger supported)

Hand collision requires only the physics asset to be done. No additional components are required for the class. Finger collision will adapt to the finger curls value(Index controllers and other controllers/gloves are working with this method).

VR Interaction

Interaction is the most important aspect of immersion into the virtual environment. Player can interact with grabbable objects, doors, drawers, levers, buttons, weapons etc.

Head Mounted VR. VR physics doors for Unreal Engine 4/5 — VR Doors

Head Mounted VR. VR Physically based grab for Unreal Engine 4/5 — VR Physically based grab

Head Mounted VR. VR Physics levers for Unreal Engine 4/5 — VR Physics levers

Head Mounted VR. VR Physics valves for Unreal Engine 4/5 — VR Physics valves

VR Hand Grab IK and animations support

After interaction specific animation can be applied. It can be static animation or IK. Fingers will be positioned at the hit points of the finger trace. IK animation can use 0.0 - 1.0 to identify the position or it can use hit position to locate the tips of the fingers(Position based IK requires a specific skeleton).

Finger IK for Unreal Engine 4/5 — Finger IK

VR Inventory

There are circle inventory by default which can be shown by pressing the button. Spawn inventory function and the inventory class can be overwritten.

VR Ammo Inventory

It is possible to place ammo in inventory which is located at the left shoulder. This gameplay feature can be redefined.

VR Actors

VR actors are classes with which player can interact with such as static meshes, skeletal meshes, levers, valves, doors, drawers, buttons etc . Interaction is also physically based but there is an option to disable it. It also provides different grab methods: Attach to, physics and IK, physics and static animation, physics and static animation to near socket, static animation combined with IK.

VR Weapons and Equipment

There is a flexible weapon class which can be used for any weapon creation. It has all developers need for easy development. Particles, sound functional and all needed functions can be overwritten. Also there is a “Equipment” class which was made for button functionality. Developer can overwrite button press functions for personal purposes.

Head Mounted VR. VR Weapons for Unreal Engine 4/5 — VR Weapons

VR Loading handler

It allows a player to move between the levels by using the loading room. It can be used for opening new levels or for a level streaming.

VR Game saves

There are save game classes for saving player’s preferences and for the level transition to save inventory etc.