Minigame work cont. - Looking into new Unity 4.6 UI with the Oculus Rift

I spent some time last night and the day before porting out the first Minigame to build a demo for Dr.Claus. I ran into a problem when creating a UI for my game. Without the Oculus Rift creating a UI was trivial.

A standard canvas worked fine and elements resized themselves nicley along the anchor points implemented in 4.6 of Unity. However when using the Oculus the UI would not show up at all.

I have been googling around as time permits to look at how others have gotten around this. One solution was to roll back to Unity 4.5.5#. This would solve the problem but means no fancy new UI features and probably a lot of annoying UI code.

The other solution I found on Youtube was to use a Canvas but setting it to world space. I tried this out and it works a treat.

However, I saw a post on Unity Answers mentioning that on the Oculus forums they said Unity 4.6 is not supported on Unity 4.6. And that people were having trouble seeing anything on the actual Rift hardware when using Unity 4.6. Additionally there have been reports of Input issues when using 4.6 with the Oculus.

I posted a request on the Team Blog asking any team members to try and snag us a Rift so that I can run some tests. I am unfortunately unable to get a Rift out myself as every time I have tried I am at work whenever a Rift is available. And I have been trying to organise this process via e-mail which is very difficult even with the Tech staff being very supportive.

If this is the case, then we would have no choice but to roll back to the supported 4.5.5# build. This means more implementation time for UI elements. I'll keep working on this today, but my current focus is getting a demo to Dr.Claus.

References used:
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/817645/how-do-i-output-to-oculus-rift-on-unity-46.html
http://rifty-business.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/unity-46-thought-bubbles-in-rift-scene.html
https://forums.oculus.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=14439
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkHZSeQGuUo

Left to do on balancing minigame:

Create UI to inform users they should use Thrust.

•    Need to rethink this, when playing on the rift this might not be a good feature. 
•   Taken from the Oculus Best Practises documentation - Page 2-3,  'Avoid visuals that upset the user’s sense of stability in their environment. Rotating or moving the horizon line or other large components of the user’s environment in conflict with the user’s real-world self-motion (or lack thereof) can be discomforting.'
• The display should respond to the user’s movements at all times, without exception. Even in menus, when the game is paused, or during cutscenes, users should be able to look around.
•  Use the SDK’s position tracking and head model to ensure the virtual cameras rotate and move in a manner consistent with head and body movements; discrepancies are discomforting.

Create immersing UI

•    Work in progress
•    Keep in mind the following from the Oculus Best Practises documentation 'Maintain VR immersion from start to finish – don’t affix an image in front of the user (such as a full-field splash screen that does not respond to head movements), as this can be disorienting.'

Add timer until victory - Added, need to hook up to code

•    Still the case

Add defeat once rotation meets X position

Replace placeholder assets

Integrate and test on Occulus Rift

•   Got this up and working for 4.6. Can make this work in 4.5.5#. Need to do more research.

Left on IR minigame:

I also started looking into Infrared for use in space exploration using the links on our group blog that Begoña posted. I have a few ideas knocking around that I hope to work on. I need to find a fun way to implement this idea rather than have a simple "press B to scan" game.