Unreal Engine
Oculus provides integrated support for Unreal Engine with the Oculus VR Plugin. The integration makes it easy to develop VR applications that target Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift headsets.
This section is your main guide for targeting these headsets with Unreal Engine, although cross references are provided for the Oculus Mobile SDK and PC SDK developer guides. In addition you will find links to the Unreal Engine documentation provided by Epic Games.
To make it easier to get started with Oculus development for Unreal Engine, the Oculus integration provides several Unreal Blueprints, which is a visual programming system. Here is a portion of a Blueprint script which includes Oculus-specific functions:
If you are not already familiar with Unreal Blueprints, Epic Games provides several videos and tutorials to help you get started. You should have a basic working knowledge of Blueprints programming before proceeding with this developer guide.
UE4 Royalty Payment Program
As an added incentive to develop VR apps with Unreal Engine, Oculus pays the royalties for any VR app developed using the Unreal Engine and sold through the Oculus Store, up to $5,000,000 USD in application revenue. In order to participate in this program you must opt in through your Oculus Developer Dashboard. Read more on the UE4 Royalty Payment Program page.
Sections in this Guide
The following sections are provided in this Oculus guide for Unreal Engine development.
Get Started:
See one of these walk through topics to get you started:
- Oculus Quest: Quick Start - Contains steps to help you get started developing Unreal applications for the Oculus Quest.
- Oculus Rift: Quick Start Steps to help you get started developing Unreal applications for the Oculus Rift.
Integration and Tools
This section contains an overview of release versions and the settings and tools provided in the Oculus integration with Unreal Engine.
Release Notes and Versions
- Release Notes
Contains links to the release notes from the last several releases. - Unreal Version Compatibility Reference:
Provides version compatibility information for UE4, the Oculus OVRPlugin, and other related Oculus SDKs.
Integration Details - Settings and Development Tools
- Unreal for VR Development Basics:
Reviews the basics for developing Oculus applications in Unreal - Plugin Settings:
Reviews the configuration options for the Oculus Plugin with links to more information. - Performance Settings:
Reviews the performance settings options for the Oculus Plugin.
Build and Deploy Topics
- Oculus Quest: Compile and Package Apps:
Reviews the basics for developing Oculus applications in Unreal. - Reduce App Deploy Time During Development:
Describes how to configure FASTBuild to reduce your app compile time. - Upload Apps to Oculus from the Unreal Editor:
Describes how to use a Launch setting to shorten device deploy time while developing your app. - Improve App Compile Time With FASTBuild:
Describes how to use the Oculus platform tool integration to upload your apps to the Oculus dashboard. - Building UE4 from Source:
Describes how to download, compile, and launch UE4 from the Oculus GitHub repository using Visual Studio 2017 or 2019. - Gear VR Development (Legacy):
Describes the end of life and ongoing maintenance for Gear VR.
Input: Hand Tracking and Controllers
To handle input events generated by Oculus Touch controllers and through hand tracking, see:
- Input: Hand Tracking and Controllers: Provides general guidance for handling controller input events.
- Mapping Oculus Controller Input to Blueprint Events: Provides a complete Blueprint reference for all controller input events.
Rendering
To enhance rendering quality and optimize the frame rendering rate, see:
- Oculus Quest: Fixed Foveated Rendering: Describes Fixed Foveated Rendering, a rendering technique for improving performance, and how to enable it in your applications for Quest.
- Oculus Quest: Testing and Performance Analysis: Describes how to optimize Oculus Quest applications.
- Oculus Rift: Testing and Performance Analysis: Describes how to optimize Oculus Rift applications.
User Experience
To provide the best possible user experience, see:
- Oculus Dash, Overlays and Input Focus: Describes how to support the the Universal Menu and Oculus Dash from within Unreal applications.
- Splash Screens: Describes how to use splash screens during application load time, and during UE4 Level transition times.
- Social Applications and Revenue: Provides an overview of the Oculus Platform social and revenue functions, with links into the Oculus Platform SDK documentation.
- Mixed Reality Capture: Describes how to incorporate live video feeds into your Unreal applications.
Platform Solutions
The Oculus Platform supports features related to security, community, revenue, and engagement such as entitlement checking, matchmaking, destinations and rich presence, in-app purchase, VoIP, and cloud saves.
Audio for Unreal Apps
Audio is critical for creating a persuasive VR experience and can contribute strongly to the user’s sense of immersion. The Audio guide provides an introduction to tools to create an immersive audio experience with Unreal Engine apps. This includes Oculus spatialization plugins (OSPs) for Unreal Engine and other audio editing tools commonly used with Unreal, including Audiokinetic Wwise and FMOD Studio. In addition, provides details on Oculus Lipsync and other audio resources.
Oculus Avatars
The Oculus Avatar SDK assists developers with implementing first-person hand presence for Oculus devices and Touch controllers. It includes avatar hand and body assets that are viewable by other users in social applications. The first-person hand models and third-person hand and body models supported by the Avatar SDK automatically pull the avatar configuration choices the user has made in Oculus Home to provide a consistent sense of identity across applications.
Unreal Reference
For a complete reference guide to all Oculus Unreal functions, see:
- Blueprints Reference: Provides a reference for the Oculus Blueprint library.
- Mapping Oculus Controller Input to Blueprint Events: Provides a complete Blueprint reference for all controller input events.
- Console Command Reference: Describes console commands for Oculus.
Unreal Samples
Learn more about the Oculus samples for Unreal Engine and see how to implement features.