Ya boy is restarting the project with unity. This was not an easy choice, but getting UE4 VR to work with c++ projects was starting to feel like I was playing Jenga with a house of cards. No matter what I would touch, everything would crash, burn, and fail to export. What this means is that I have like 5 weeks to make this happen, spooky but what are ya gonna do about it.

Now the good news: Unity is awesome. It took like 2 hours to set up VR projects, literally 10 times faster than how long it took me to figure out how UE4 VR works. Additionally, I have a ton of resources available to me now from previous seniors and classmates who have worked with unity before! And the best part: my compile times are 30 seconds faster!

Additional news: So far I have written scripts that grant my hands proper collision. Funny thing though, my hands could collide with one another, but they didn’t return back to where my controllers were once they were done colliding. It was funny trying to push my own hands 50 feet in the air, but I did find a fix. The pool cue snaps back to the hand model if the distance between the two objects is ever > 0.

Welp, that’s all for this time, next time I hope to have a pool table and some balls to knock around. Yeehaw.

So I have found a solid solution to our looney tunes problem! When gravity is a suggestion, make it a demand. I upped the force of gravity to approx. 5000 times Earth’s gravity. It was originally 10000 times but the pool balls started to crunch up (hence “Crunch Time”). You might be wondering, what happens if you drop your cue stick. Well, what happens is it plummets hilariously fast. To prevent this, I have disabled gravity on the stick and made an invisible barrier so it doesn’t fly away.

Next time I plan to have some color, I’ll try to figure out how to take photos on the oculus!

As funny as it is seeing my VR objects launch into the horizon, I figure it’s about time to stop playing pool with looney tunes physics. You can add mass to objects to weigh them down! This is critically undertested but maybe after a game of pool tomorrow I can decide if I need to put any more physical constraints on my objects to keep them from going where no man has gone before. I also made it so my hands don’t just phase through objects, they have collision and they show resistance to objects with great mass!

Next up, it’s time to make my pool table suck less and time to get my balls in order. Tune in next week to see things get fancy!

There goes my sanity.

After 5 weeks of absolutely no progress, 20 hours of export errors, and several nights of uninstalling and reinstalling android studio, it happened. Ladies and gentlemen, we did it. I am now officially using unreal engine 4 to program in VR. I wondered why it was so difficult to get the software to function at all. This process was a miserable experience, but the frustration I felt was almost…tactical… so I did some digging and found the next big conspiracy.

This is Tim Sweeney, the CEO and Founder of Epic Games:

At first glance, one might see a well-accomplished Video game programmer and developer, businessman, and winner of several awards such as AIAS Hall of Fame Award (2012) and GDC Lifetime Achievement Award (2017), but after some extensive research, I have made a shocking discovery.

While checking in on my two major trustworthy sources of evidence (ifunny.com and reddit.com), I found this picture:

Here we see Tim Sweeney with the CTO Kim Libreri. You’re trying to tell me that Epic games are getting away with being run by 2 guys named Tim and Kim? Two game developers should not get away with pulling a Luigi/Waluigi maneuver. What the big media companies don’t what you to know is that Kim Libreri is also known as Mr. Reality, the CEO of Reality, a mega-corporation responsible for making everything real (not to be confused with God). When I saw Kim in here, I knew he had something to do with what makes VR so difficult to set up through unreal engine, so I did some more digging. What I found was groundbreaking:

Above is an undoctored photo of Kim Libreri attending a group function for people who hate virtuality, but if you look closely you can see he is wearing a presidential nametag.

Putting all the pieces together, “Kim Libreri” can be rearranged as Milkier Bri which rhymes with Reality who is also the president of a VR hate club has been making the process of getting VR to work such a nightmare that no one makes anything VR. (Just kidding, almost everything I have said is lies. Tim and Kim are very talented individuals)

Update

I have made a pool table, pool stick, and a pool ball and am able to pick things up and throw them around. I needed to vent about how long it took, hence the fanfiction and libel above.

Next up: Gonna make it so the pool balls don’t launch into orbit. See you next time!

What a pain…hehe. So I made a PERT chart today and it honestly, felt great to write my thoughts down. I have a page dedicated to the chart with explanations as to what everything means, feel free to look it over. This project is feeling more and more real every day, and having this plan in front of me makes me feel more certain that I really can do this. It’s tough holding myself to standards that I myself set, but if click my heels together three times and forget as hard as I can, maybe I can pretend that someone else is holding me to these standards so I can pressure myself to meet the goals.

In my next post I’ll I will have a cue stick modeled and hopefully, I can post a video of me knocking a cue ball around. Until then, party on.

“As the child delights in his mud pie, so the adult enjoys building things, especially of his own design.”

This week I have been looking at different documentation for VR in unreal engine. Between Google, youtube, and a big old book called Unreal Engine 4 Virtual Reality Projects, I have sponged up a lot of tips, tricks, and magic that I can pull out of the top of my head for when I actually start using the software. I have not made as much progress this week as I had hoped, this is due to the following:

• Szidonia’s Birthday was 2/10/22 and today is Valentine’s day, so this weekend was a mash up of both, requiring my full attention in order to continue living. (JK it’s because I wanted to do something nice for her)
• I needed some extra time to catch up on the Numerical Lab I missed last week.
• I am trying to balence work, school, and club meetings and so far failing.

Because of this, I was unable to find a nice 1-2 hour chunk of time where I could work with the software. However, I was able to read a lot so I still consider that to be pseudo-progress. I already have some times set aside for Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday where I will be working on making Billiards come to life.

Goals For Next week:

I really want to dive into Unreal and start making things click together. The first step will be making a pool stick that I can swish around (may add lightsaber effects for fun if I have time). I can make a pretty good model in Unreal using blueprints and shapes, but this begs the big question:

How do I incorperate C++ with my project blueprints?

Seriously how?

I have very brief experience with C++ and unreal as the lab I did with Giesler was not exactly in-depth. Two solutions came to mind:

• Just look it up…

I did find a good video on it. The problem is that I have not tried it myself, and that’s where the demons hide

• Ask someone about it…

A great idea! I should probably schedule something soon, but I should try it on my machine first before I claim defeat.

Remarks:

I’ve been considering vlogging/streaming my coding sessions as another form of documenting the process. I thought it would be fun, plus if anyone stops by maybe they can help me debug.

Till next time, have a good week. Happy Valentines Day!

In terms of progress on VR Billiards, we have no progress :(. In terms of figuring out the VR software within Unreal Engine, we have progress :). Last week I acquired some textbooks about Unreal Engine, one in particular deals specifically with VR. I have yet to read the VR book, but I’ll let you know if it’s any good after my next post. Additionally, Dr. McVey gave me a cool little cord that I can use to hook up the Oculus Quest 2 directly with my computer, so that will save my full head of hair.

What’s Next?

Next up, I’m gonna try to actually get my hands nice and dirty and make some simple VR stuff. I’ll let you know how much hair I lose trying to figure it out in my next post, l8r!