cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Dream Theater VR - Demo

ThomasPasieka
Explorer
Hey there folks,

Just recently I finished a little Tech Demo which I wanted to share with you. It's was mainly created to test software (Unity 5) and Hardware limitations. There is a whole lot of audio/video in this project so Framerate might drop for you once the video plays. Apart from that I think it's a nice little Demo. Let me know if you like it. You can grab it from my Blog:

http://thomaspasieka.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/dream-theater-vr-a-little-demo-oculus-rift/


Thanks for checking it out!

Thomas Pasieka

8 REPLIES 8

drash
Heroic Explorer
Quite an interesting way to showcase band members and albums. Very well done, and the scene is pretty to look at.

I was getting a solid 75 FPS on GTX 660 except after starting up the videos, then it dropped to 55 FPS and stayed there even after the curtains closed on the video wall. I also got some vertical tearing the first time running it, but went away after restarting.

Thanks for sharing!
  • Titans of Space PLUS for Quest is now available on DrashVR.com

ThomasPasieka
Explorer
Hey there Drash,

Thanks for downloading and giving it a spin 🙂 Glad you liked it! Yeah I am getting 75FPS all the way up until the video. I am not sure what to do (if there is anything that can be done) to get better framerate during the video. It seems like the length of the video doesn't matter either. I tested it with a short video track and it didn't make much of a difference. Perhaps that's something Unity or Oculus needs to adress? I am not really a programmer but mainly an artist so my knowledge in that area is limited. In any case, thanks again!

Thomas Pasieka

drash
Heroic Explorer
For the videos, if you're using the built-in MovieTexture approach, the performance can be improved greatly by adjusting the import settings of your video to be lower quality. This might help a lot without any drawback in your case since your videos are appearing on relatively small displays.

Beyond that, I suspect anyone serious about movie playback in Unity needs to get one of those expensive plugins and fiddle with codecs. :x
  • Titans of Space PLUS for Quest is now available on DrashVR.com

ThomasPasieka
Explorer
Hey again Drash,

Yeah I am indeed using the standard movieTexture approach. I did try to convert and change quality settings for the video using different codecs before I imported it. So far nothing really made a difference performance wise. Are there any plugins for that sort of thing that you can recommend?

drash
Heroic Explorer
"ThomasPasieka" wrote:
Hey again Drash,

Yeah I am indeed using the standard movieTexture approach. I did try to convert and change quality settings for the video using different codecs before I imported it. So far nothing really made a difference performance wise. Are there any plugins for that sort of thing that you can recommend?

The quality setting I mentioned is actually inside of Unity, which shows up as a Quality slider in the inspector when you've selected a movie file in the project -- you can only visually see it and adjust after you've imported it the first time unfortunately. Reducing that and hitting Apply has a big impact on playback CPU usage in my experience.

Otherwise, I personally don't have firsthand experience with video plugins, but for programs like the original VR Cinema, Cineveo, Welcome to Oculus, etc, I believe they use AVPro.
  • Titans of Space PLUS for Quest is now available on DrashVR.com

ThomasPasieka
Explorer
Hey again Drash,

I played with the quality settings and even set them to the lowest possible setting. Doesn't make a difference. I took a shorter 1 min clip for the video. This resulted in the Framerate being slightly better (around 55-60) but still far from acceptable. I looked at AVPro but it states that it is Windows only. I need for it to work on OSX and Windows. Shame really. Anybody else here having experience with video/codecs?

Thomas

ThomasPasieka
Explorer
Nevermind! Figured out a way to get smooth 75FPS. Took a few days and lots of trials and error but I now have smooth video in Unity5 (beta). No plugins used.

virror
Explorer
And the solution was? : D