Forums » Suggestions
Gear VR interface enhancements
I'm primarily a Gear VR player, and I've got a few QOL suggestions for the interface.
First and foremost, comms are really, really difficult. Like, borderline Steven Hawking difficult. Speech-to-text is helpful in getting out messages quicker (when it actually gets what you're saying, at least - thanks Google), and the macros help too, but there's certain things that just take forever to get across. Being able to press the Activate button on a player's name in chat to type it out in your message would be good for whispering and replying, for one, and a text prediction service for the in-game keyboard, while maybe difficult to implement, would help immensely. In fact, being able to use the GVR's touchpad to mouse over keys might even work. In its current state, though, it's less trouble for me to just not get involved in chat than to try and type with my face, which makes the new player woes all that much worse.
Since I play the game with a controller, I'd appreciate being able to use the analog sticks to navigate menus outside of a virtual cursor, but since your PC-native UI probably wasn't designed with controllers in mind I understand this might be difficult.
And I'm not sure if anything can be done about this, but I've lost more ships than I care to admit to the "Gear VR needs to cool down to maintain optimal performance" message suddenly cutting into the game. If there is any way to disable this message on your end or make it less intrusive, that'd be helpful.
Thanks!
First and foremost, comms are really, really difficult. Like, borderline Steven Hawking difficult. Speech-to-text is helpful in getting out messages quicker (when it actually gets what you're saying, at least - thanks Google), and the macros help too, but there's certain things that just take forever to get across. Being able to press the Activate button on a player's name in chat to type it out in your message would be good for whispering and replying, for one, and a text prediction service for the in-game keyboard, while maybe difficult to implement, would help immensely. In fact, being able to use the GVR's touchpad to mouse over keys might even work. In its current state, though, it's less trouble for me to just not get involved in chat than to try and type with my face, which makes the new player woes all that much worse.
Since I play the game with a controller, I'd appreciate being able to use the analog sticks to navigate menus outside of a virtual cursor, but since your PC-native UI probably wasn't designed with controllers in mind I understand this might be difficult.
And I'm not sure if anything can be done about this, but I've lost more ships than I care to admit to the "Gear VR needs to cool down to maintain optimal performance" message suddenly cutting into the game. If there is any way to disable this message on your end or make it less intrusive, that'd be helpful.
Thanks!
Just a brief aside regarding the "cool down" message on GVR: I'm not sure if you are using the 2016 version like me, but a couple rubber bands and a refrigerated cold pack has all but eliminated this across all apps. Whereas I used to more or less be limited to 20 minute sessions at a time, now the only limiting factors are how long I can wear the headset before it gets uncomfortable (about an hour) and battery life (several hours in VR). I've also noticed performance is much better when keeping the phone at cool temperatures.
We actually put a lot of time into making the game as power/heat efficient as we possibly could. It's really difficult, because our game is also one of the most performance intensive on GearVR. On my own Galaxy S7 I usually have no problems playing for 20-30 minutes at a time, in a room with an ambient temperature around 70deg F (21C), and zero other background applications. But, my S7 is development device that's basically dedicated to GearVR usage, is turned off in between sessions, and has basically no apps or usage other than GearVR (so Facebook isn't clocking up the CPU to check for status updates in the background, or anything like that).
We do not have any control over Oculus's pop-up message about heat warnings.
Part of the GearVR API is actually discrete control over the device's CPU and GPU clock speeds (3 settings for each). We did a lot of research and found what we believed to be the best balance, but it may be possible for us to expose these settings for people to change themselves. You could, then, get lower performance without overheating (at a substantial frame-rate cost), or get a little higher performance while overheating much more quickly. In any event, it might behelpful to people on devices (or in environments) that are more prone to overheating.
In regards to the controller, you can use the D-pad to navigate the menus. I never use the analog-sticks to navigate the menus, but we left the virtual mouse there in case people wanted to use it?
I definitely appreciate the need for better UX and UI mechanics during interaction. Gaze-selection of a player's name, to prepend a message, is probably something we can do. Predictive text is a bit more of a problem, I'm not sure. I welcome more feedback and ideas on these kinds of usage issues.
We do not have any control over Oculus's pop-up message about heat warnings.
Part of the GearVR API is actually discrete control over the device's CPU and GPU clock speeds (3 settings for each). We did a lot of research and found what we believed to be the best balance, but it may be possible for us to expose these settings for people to change themselves. You could, then, get lower performance without overheating (at a substantial frame-rate cost), or get a little higher performance while overheating much more quickly. In any event, it might behelpful to people on devices (or in environments) that are more prone to overheating.
In regards to the controller, you can use the D-pad to navigate the menus. I never use the analog-sticks to navigate the menus, but we left the virtual mouse there in case people wanted to use it?
I definitely appreciate the need for better UX and UI mechanics during interaction. Gaze-selection of a player's name, to prepend a message, is probably something we can do. Predictive text is a bit more of a problem, I'm not sure. I welcome more feedback and ideas on these kinds of usage issues.
On the topic of the keyboard, gaze style swiping for words and sentences would be delightful. Google's own Android keyboard supports swiping and more and is open source with source code available here: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/inputmethods/LatinIME/
Not sure how easy or hard that would be to impliment, but at least quality examples are freely available.
On the menu note, I have to agree with OP. I'd much rather use the analog sticks to at least control the scrolling of menus if not their selection. Scrolling with my face is pretty annoying.
Not sure how easy or hard that would be to impliment, but at least quality examples are freely available.
On the menu note, I have to agree with OP. I'd much rather use the analog sticks to at least control the scrolling of menus if not their selection. Scrolling with my face is pretty annoying.
You can scroll with the D-pad? There's never a specific need to scroll with gaze..