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Navigating the challenges of Meta's Unreal Engine 5.3.2 Fork

So, you're making a VR/MR game! In this blog, I'll go over some common pitfalls that we've experinced while using Unreal for VR development, and our solution to them.


Why should I use this fork, rather than a regular UE?

This fork, while annoying to setup, provides a ton of performance benefits and some specific features (like Application Space Warp and Tonemap Subpass) which you will only ever find on the fork. The differences in performance are quite striking - If you're taking VR seriously, I really recommend using the fork over the default "binary build" (the version you get from the Epic Games Launcher).


Here's a feature outline list, from Oculus's website:


Ok, sounds great! How do I get started?

This will take a while...

  1. Build Unreal From the Source

    1. I recommend choosing the project to be on an SSD, not a Hard Drive - simply swapping the place where VS and the project are stored can literally cut down hours of build time. Make the investment in a fast SSD and you'll reap the rewards quickly!

    2. When setting up VS, make sure to have the following sections ticked. If you're on Windows 11, just select the latest SDK for that. VS will not let you compile if you don't have this ticked!

  1. Setup Android

    1. You should do this BEFORE you start building Unreal from the source. Reason being is that running Setup.bat will setup the project for the current supported platforms, which doesn't include android by default! Save yourself an hour of build time by running this stuff before you execute Setup.bat.


What settings do I use to even start development?

There are so many unique settings that you'll need to modify that it can quickly become overwhelming. We've personally tested this and found it to work for Android, so we can recommend it.


When you're in the project for the first time, a window will pop up from Meta's Project Setup Tool. Just click "enable all recommendations" and that should be enough. There's of course more settings to be tweaked for further optimisations, but that's out of scope of this blog post for today.


Uhhh, why are there so many crashes?

  1. We find the engine will crash if you swap between PIE Desktop mode and VR PIE Preview mode. Just close the engine, enable Quest Link, and re open it.

  2. Make sure to save often! The engine may crash sometimes, usually when entering or exiting PIE, so enable "Save on Compile" in the compile dropdown of any blueprint.

  3. VR Pie isn't starting? Take the headset off, then put it on. The regaining of focus will usually cause PIE to appear.


Wow, this seems like alot of hassle - is it worth it?

As mentioned at the start, if you're just experimenting with VR, then it isn't worth the pain of going through this process. But for any serious VR dev, these features are immensely helpful and worth the trials of this setup process.


I hope this was helpful! We'll be sharing more insights over the coming weeks, stay tuned for more!

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