System Shock 2 VR

[6667eb30b03bcOlfred]

If you don't have any modeling experience and need some help there I can help out a bit.

[6667eb30b070aHardkern]

ooh, I see SCP world geometry, nice. also, edited the video into the post, the non-clickable picture was just weird (seemed intentional, but why? the forum supports proper youtube embedding).

Used the link with preview option. Didn't see the youtube button. 

would maybe want to know more about those flawed objects, that could be something we should be fixing.

Oh you mean the .bin model files? My theory is, that they where exported with the blender plugin itself. The issue is pointers not being set to correct byte offsets. I don't think its something worth fixing if it hasn't lead to any problems yet.
The node_start pointer is not set to the actual node_start in a very few number of .bin models. A good example is hackcrat.bin from SHUTUP-ND.
My importer used this value, but the blender importer did not.

If you don't have any modeling experience and need some help there I can help out a bit.

I do know some blender-fu, if very limited. I appreciate your offer. I don't need any model right now, with the laser pistol and such, but it would be nice to have a pistol model with a magazin hole and a movable slide eventually.

[6667eb30b0bcbOlfred]

Oh you mean the .bin model files? My theory is, that they where exported with the blender plugin itself.

Almost all the models coming from me are exported with the Blender plugin. Sometimes with older versions of it.
And I guess most models from SCP are probably from me as well.

[6667eb30b0dafZylonBane]

Why are you making up new, awkward ways to display player health and weapon ammo, when the game fiction already explains the HUD as an overlay provided by your cyber implant? You don't see VR games like Elite Dangerous putting any information on the pilot's hands.

[6667eb30b0ff4icemann]

That was my thoughts as well. In System Shock 1 & 2 in-game lore, you see your health and stats as a direct projection to your eyes from your cyber interface. Much like:

From Terminator. The player is literally a cyborg. So it makes perfect sense that they would see their stats in their view. I hate the watch.

By the way, Unity uses C# which works completely fine with inheritance (much like C++). You just need to setup the classes + inheritance / polymorphism. In this respect your code would work nigh on identical to the original games code. So rather than having to setup each and every object individually, you setup the base class (eg object), then in the tree-like structure have sub classes which inherit from the one above, gaining all functions and variables (attributes) from the one above.

For example:

Object->Pistol->Pistol Ammo Clip

If you open up the level editor, you can see all the objects and what they inherit from. Would be identical stuff in Unity.

[6667eb30b112dZylonBane]

Remember when Cyberblutch had to be talked down from adding claws and pointy ears to his Hybrid models? I think there's a certain personality type that isn't happy unless they put their own unique stamp on things, even when it doesn't make any sense for what they're doing.

[6667eb30b1226icemann]

I remember that

[6667eb30b1407Valet2]

Adding the hud overlay into the vr games is a bit messy. First of all, it should be on a certain depth, a comfortable one, so the player won't have difficulty to re-focus on the hud from being looking far or close.

Another huge problem is the clear view area. In VR only the small ellipse right in the center of the lens has the most clarity. Everything around is blurry. Why we might not notice it while playing -- we tend to rotate our head to point the object -- not our eyes, so the object appears to be in the clear zone the entire time. So you have to place the hud in that zone, but in that case it would block the view. It's like a spot on your glasses.

You can experience it by running a non-vr game in vr headset using a wrapper utility called VorpX.

I guess that's one of the reasons (if not the main reason) why vr games have anything not on virtual hud but on weapons or hands. But if there's some menu to be opened -- the menu itself is a 3d-object in the world, so you can move around it and interact with. Also, the devs of HL Alyx told they removed arms because they really blocked the view. It might look weird from the viewer looking at the monitor, but totally fine for the player standing with the headset.

[6667eb30b16a4Hardkern]

Yeah, I agree with Valet2. If Valve thinks thats the way to do it, I'm inclined to agree.

By the way, Unity uses C# which works completely fine with inheritance (much like C++). You just need to setup the classes + inheritance / polymorphism. In this respect your code would work nigh on identical to the original games code. So rather than having to setup each and every object individually, you setup the base class (eg object), then in the tree-like structure have sub classes which inherit from the one above, gaining all functions and variables (attributes) from the one above.

I do know that inheritance in C# is possible. 
The dark engine itself does not use polymorphism for its property implementation. It uses a tree like data structure. This tree like data structure is in ways similiar to unity's gameobject hierachy. To store all the different property types requires use of generics or boxing/unboxing. Both are not supported by unity's build-in serializer. Hence the need for a workaround.

I hate the watch.

Good... Good... Let the hate flow through you. 

[6667eb30b184bJosiahJack]

HUD overlays are required.  He's called goggles for a reason.

It's not readily apparent what the indicators mean on the dial either, and health absolutely MUST be visible at all times.

[6667eb30b1956icemann]

Otherwise you'd have a Doom 3 situation of needing to do 2 things at once (eg in Doom 3's case, torch and gun not usable at same time in the vanilla version of the game).

[6667eb30b1a6dZylonBane]

[6667eb30b1c6dDenhonator]

Although showing these things directly as a HUD, it's really not very comfortable in VR to fill your field of vision with 2D elements glued to your face. I would much rather have the watch. And I don't think health needs to be visible at all times. Again, that's rather annoying in VR. It's alright to do it in such a way that the HUD only follows yaw rotation and you have to look downwards to see it, but you run into problems if the levels have verticality.

A decent compromise could be to project a floating UI thingy from your hand at the press of a button. And maybe the HUD on your face as an option, but I think most people would want it off their face pretty fast. After all, I'm sure the implants Goggles has have positional and rotational tracking as well as good AR features and can do better than to slap static images into his vision.

[6667eb30b1db4Olfred]

Well.... there are HUDs in jets. So I don't believe it's impossible to make a proper 2D display that isn't unpleasing.
I believe it's just that they don't add a depth to it.
But then again I guess there is missing the eye tracking in the VR goggles.

This are just wild guesses as I don't have VR goggles.

[6667eb30b1ee4Denhonator]

Eye tracking is not included in the common consumer HMDs. That could definitely be used to make a HUD like that better, like fading out the 2D elements if they're not in focus. Haven't played around with anything like that yet though

[6667eb30b2262unn_atropos]

How about making the gui into 3D objects? (Sorry for the crude example)
[floaty.jpg expired]

[6667eb30b23c5Hardkern]

An awesome guy going by shadept mocked up an improvement info watch design. I really like it. Would you hate it now less?

https://imgur.com/cnPYupa

[6667eb30b2527voodoo47]

that ain't bad.

[6667eb30b2682Valet2]

I totally like the original elements and style!

Btw, the original interface could be toggled so it would appear in the world as the 3D object, with all those shades (imitating the volume in the orignal) being the real 3D ledges and cavities.

[6667eb30b299dsarge945]

And here I am trying to figure out basic VR systems in Unity because the SteamVR Unity plugin is awful...

[6667eb30b2b12Hardkern]

What is the communities knowledge about sound management in SS2? I've looked around a bit, but found nothing of much substance. I want to decide, if I can import and map sounds automatically or if I have to do them by hand. It would be nice to know what a sound archetype is or how objects are linked to sounds.

[6667eb30b2cadHardkern]

New video adressing the recent tweets of nightdive regarding their own SS2 VR version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqyezOQRqNA

Tl;dw:
Not going to continue this project. No point having to different VR versions of the same game. While I wish they would have announced their VR-version sooner, I'm still happy we will get one. I trust in NightDives employees to do the game justice and release a proper VR game.
(And if they aren't who knows, maybe someday I will start working on this again. But for now I'm done with it.)

[6667eb30b2de3icemann]

Sad to this project coming to an end. I'd have liked to see it continued for a different take on the concept. And no work is ever truly wasted. You did some damn fine work.

[6667eb30b2f26Valet2]

So they haven't asked you to join the team yet?