Is Ogre Next a good option for mobile VR development? (Quest 2, Pico 4, etc)

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ferat
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Is Ogre Next a good option for mobile VR development? (Quest 2, Pico 4, etc)

Post by ferat »

Hello guys,

I'm happy to be here after discovering Ogre in 2009 (if I remember correctly) as a teenager and having used it in some small projects. Years later, I started my career as a developer in the Web area. Although I still work a little with 3D, I am more familiar with engines/frameworks such as Unity, Unreal, Three.js, and BabylonJS.

However, I'm looking to create a simple project for Mobile VR with Android/Vulkan (Quest 2 and Pico VR) as a hobby, but I know what a tremendous job it is to write a 3D renderer, so I thought of Ogre.

I looked at the documentation, and it seems that Ogre Next has something VR (I found little on the forum and this reference from 2019: https://www.ogre3d.org/2019/09/22/impro ... hub-and-ci), but I haven't found much recent stuff.

Therefore, I would like to ask a few questions:

1 - Would Ogre Next be a good choice to use as a renderer framework for an android app that runs on Quest 2 and Pico VR?
2 - Are there published mobile VR games or apps that have used Ogre as a 3D renderer?
3 - Are there code examples showing Ogre being used with Android VR devices?

Thanks in advance for the answers

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dark_sylinc
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Re: Is Ogre Next a good option for mobile VR development? (Quest 2, Pico 4, etc)

Post by dark_sylinc »

Hi!

OgreNext did VR integration with OpenVR. We support it on OpenGL + D3D11 backends.

The Vulkan RenderSystem was added later; but we didn't add OpenVR integration, I suppose it shouldn't be much work but I never tried (w/ luck it's just a matter of adding the propper string to mApiTextureType in Samples/2.0/Tutorials/Tutorial_OpenVR/OpenVRCompositorListener.cpp).

However OpenVR is Desktop VR.

And you are talking about MobileVR (i.e. the Quest) which is Android.
Vulkan support for Android is robust now in OgreNext 2.4 & 3.0.

My suggestion is that you try to run some of our Android samples like PbsMaterials on Android. First on your phone, then on your Quest. And in particular you need to make sure that Sample "InstancedStereo" (Samples/2.0/ApiUsage/InstancedStereo) runs on the Quest/Pico.

We rely on gl_ViewportIndex for very efficient instance stereo/VR rendering and we've found various drivers have broken support for it (I'd like to think at least the Quest/Pico would support this feature well; but Android drivers are full of surprises). Hence why I you must test InstancedStereo sample before deciding.

1 - Would Ogre Next be a good choice to use as a renderer framework for an android app that runs on Quest 2 and Pico VR?

In terms of performance, definitely. OgreNext will get you very good performance, which is key in VR.

VR always struggles with performance and the big known engines always cause problem in this area unless your game looks very simple and has few objects in scene.

In terms of support, I'm afraid you won't find many users doing this so if you encounter problems you'll be on your own as we cannot repro the problem (unless the bug repros on a normal Android device or on PC).

2 - Are there published mobile VR games or apps that have used Ogre as a 3D renderer?

For mobile apps, I'm working on an upcoming game (unfortunately it keeps getting delayed for trivial reasons; but it's almost ready for publishing) and Eugene is also working on an Android OgreNext-based version of LiveInterior but I don't know if it's already published.

User xrgo may know more, since he also has done VR with OgreNext.

3 - Are there code examples showing Ogre being used with Android VR devices?

Normal Android? Yes, almost all samples work on Android (using Vulkan).
Android VR? I'm afraid we have no sample.

ferat
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Re: Is Ogre Next a good option for mobile VR development? (Quest 2, Pico 4, etc)

Post by ferat »

Hi dark_sylinc,

Thank you very much for your detailed response.

With the information you've given, I believe it's worth a try. I'll try to break it down into small steps like:

1 - create a small demo with Ogre (a rotating cube or something)
2 - try to compile it for regular Android
3 - try to run it in Quest
4 - convert to Vulkan if possible

If I succeed, I intend to share it here on the forum.

Thank you so much again!