Forums » Suggestions
VR - Interactive HUD Elements
A request was made, in another VR thread, for buttons or other interactive elements, on the HUD, that could be used while in flight as a means to free up buttons on the controllers for other things. I figure these might be similar to touch regions on mobile devices.
mybeatsarebollox said:
Adding buttons to the virtual cockpit would be great. Really great if you could use them by booping them with your fist/controller, I wouldn't want anything footery like switches as I'm very combat orientated but more buttons and available functionality would be great. Even if it was some sort of buttons added to the HUD that you could select by pointing and holding both triggers like target selection.
It may be possible already to approximate such an interface, but I think it would require taking the user out of flight mode, into a state like opening chat, so they could use the mouse to click on something. I don't have a VR device to even test this specific method.
Something more seamless would obviously be preferred so that the user could activate something easily during stressful situations.
Even if there weren't any official controls added to the VR HUD, if the functionality were added to the API, plugin authors could create something to support this.
mybeatsarebollox said:
Adding buttons to the virtual cockpit would be great. Really great if you could use them by booping them with your fist/controller, I wouldn't want anything footery like switches as I'm very combat orientated but more buttons and available functionality would be great. Even if it was some sort of buttons added to the HUD that you could select by pointing and holding both triggers like target selection.
It may be possible already to approximate such an interface, but I think it would require taking the user out of flight mode, into a state like opening chat, so they could use the mouse to click on something. I don't have a VR device to even test this specific method.
Something more seamless would obviously be preferred so that the user could activate something easily during stressful situations.
Even if there weren't any official controls added to the VR HUD, if the functionality were added to the API, plugin authors could create something to support this.
Even if there weren't any official controls added to the VR HUD, if the functionality were added to the API, plugin authors could create something to support this.
Yeah, agreed, both on having more inherent configurable control options, as well as more plugin options.
With the Quest we do have a pretty considerable number of bindable controls, because we do "chord" combinations of controller buttons, and present it all in a relatively simple and friendly usable format (unlike, say, the PC version).
But, I've still been thinking about all of this for.. well, many years, including what Plugins might look like expanded into the VR space. I'm not against it, although it has some unique challenges. Then all of this was put on the back burner after our platform issues on VR emerged; but if we end up with more VR users again, it's something we'll re-evaluate.
Unlike the PC/mobile versions, we intended to take a more locked-down approach to augmenting the VR UI with plugins, simply because VR is extremely framerate-dependent, and the "negative" outcome of reduced framerate is someone actually throwing up, as opposed to just complaining about a slower framerate.
So, everything currently on the VR UI is very carefully optimized and profiled, to achieve framerate goals on specific hardware.
Still, I think there's also the possibility of having a separate "visual space" where plugins might be allocated, with limits on how often the UI is allowed to update, and then maybe having some configurable "flags" that are within the common visible region, to cause someone to know that Plugin X is telling them something.
But, the performance challenges of VR do not lend itself well to the kind of "plugin free-for-all" that people are used to on PC, or even mobile.
Yeah, agreed, both on having more inherent configurable control options, as well as more plugin options.
With the Quest we do have a pretty considerable number of bindable controls, because we do "chord" combinations of controller buttons, and present it all in a relatively simple and friendly usable format (unlike, say, the PC version).
But, I've still been thinking about all of this for.. well, many years, including what Plugins might look like expanded into the VR space. I'm not against it, although it has some unique challenges. Then all of this was put on the back burner after our platform issues on VR emerged; but if we end up with more VR users again, it's something we'll re-evaluate.
Unlike the PC/mobile versions, we intended to take a more locked-down approach to augmenting the VR UI with plugins, simply because VR is extremely framerate-dependent, and the "negative" outcome of reduced framerate is someone actually throwing up, as opposed to just complaining about a slower framerate.
So, everything currently on the VR UI is very carefully optimized and profiled, to achieve framerate goals on specific hardware.
Still, I think there's also the possibility of having a separate "visual space" where plugins might be allocated, with limits on how often the UI is allowed to update, and then maybe having some configurable "flags" that are within the common visible region, to cause someone to know that Plugin X is telling them something.
But, the performance challenges of VR do not lend itself well to the kind of "plugin free-for-all" that people are used to on PC, or even mobile.