The Unreal Engine (UE) Getting Started guide walks you through setting up your development environment and checking the user’s entitlement.

Using the Platform SDK is slightly different from using the SDK in other development environments. For example, you can invoke Platform features using various methods, such as Blueprints or native C++ APIs.

Before you can integrate the Platform SDK, you’ll need to create an app in the developer dashboard if you haven’t already. See the Creating and Managing Apps page to create an app.

Review the Meta Quest onboarding for UE development in the Unreal Engine Guide. Once you’re comfortable using UE to develop Meta Quest apps, you can implement Meta Horizon platform features.

Note: Meta Horizon OS platform features are integrated directly into the Unreal Editor. To see what version of the platform the Unreal version you are using includes, see Version Compatibility. To use the latest version of the platform, you can Download it separately.

Choose the method to install the Platform SDK depending on which version of Unreal Engine you are using.

Note: This only applies to UE5 for UE4. See Using the GitHub Fork of Unreal Engine below.

Install the GitHub Meta Fork of Unreal Engine, which includes the Platform SDK.

[OnlineSubsystemOculus]
bEnabled=true
OculusAppId=[app_id_here]
RiftAppId=[rift app id here]

OculusAppId is the unique App ID you’ve retrieved from the API page of the Meta Quest Developer Dashboard.

RiftAppId is the App ID if creating a Quest Link App. This ID is different from the OculusAppId.

The configuration steps in this section allows developers to run local builds of the application during the development process. This process is required, otherwise local versions of the app will not pass the entitlement check that you’ll integrate below.

Once the steps above are completed, the entitlement check will succeed when running a local build of your application.

Your project likely already has a custom GameInstance designed to support your application. If there isn’t one, you must add one and ensure the project uses it. In the Maps & Modes part of the Project Settings, click the + sign to create a new Blueprint.

Create the new Game Instance class and assign it to the project in the Project Settings > Maps & Modes > Game Instance

Once completed, the empty Blueprint editor will appear.

You must enable the Meta XR Platform to process messages and generate events. You can only call the Platform Nodes once the subsystem is running.

Initializing the platform subsystem raises an event indicating whether the process succeeded or failed. To respond to this event, create a custom event named OvrPlatformSubsystemStarted in the GameInstance Blueprint and attach the execution pin to the nodes to handle the success or failure of the subsystem’s initialization. The custom event name must be exactly OvrPlatformSubsystemStarted and within the GameInstance Blueprint.

Create the custom OvrPlatformSubsystemStarted event.

Add the OvrPlatformReady variable.

The message pump described above raises events that may interest you as your application runs. You should bind event handlers to each of the events you care about.

To respond to these events, create custom event nodes and connect them to bind event nodes. You must do this before starting the message pump.

Some of the events include:

Start the message pump to begin processing messages and generating events

The default initialization path is one that blocks while the Platform SDK does it’s work. While we’re always trying to improve the initialization time, it can take a few seconds to complete. At the cost of some added complexity, you can choose to use the Platform SDK’s asynchronous start up path. This can help app launch time and development iteration time.

The flow is largely the same as the standard synchronous path described above. The differences are that the initialization won’t start until you start the message pump, and that your game instance subclass’s OvrPlatformSubsystemStarted custom event will not be called until after the initialization attempt completes (and thus it will also be after the message pump is started).

To opt into the asynchronous start up path, add a DoAsyncInit=true line to the [OnlineSubsystemOculus]DefaultEngine.ini block you used to enable the Platform SDK Plugin.

One of the first things you must do when a user launches your app is verify that they own a legitimate copy of your app.

See Entitlement Check for instructions on how to check the user’s entitlement.

Before you can test the Platform SDK features, you must upload a shipping build of your app to the developer center. You only need to do this once and may then test locally and make changes without re-uploading. See Upload Apps For Meta Quest.

The Platform SDK provides a wide variety of useful Blueprint functions and events. Here you can see a list of some of the categories to explore:

If you want to see a practical application that leverages many common features, please refer to the Shared Spaces sample on GitHub.