Dev update #29 - an update on our progress

This is text update only, we want to explain what we are doing and why we think it's a best way to do currently. 

---

VRidge core improvements 

Moonlight, stability & launch flow improvements, fake VR groundwork

Reasons

VRidge was first designed as Oculus proxy interceptor that acted like Oculus DK2. Its work flow was quite simple because VR was simple back then. There were no controllers, no always-on services, no Oculus Home / SteamVR dashboard like environments. You started a game by running its executable and VRidge process lifetime was limited to game process lifetime.

We added SteamVR support exactly year ago, on 21th April 2016. It was first SteamVR-mobile HMD bridge back then and it helped us grew a lot. Then we continued adding more and more features and changes like UI slider for supersampling (which was later added by SteamVR itself), better support for controllers, FreeTrack, 1440p, Intel and Software encoders, Gear VR, partial Daydream support and lately - VRidge Tracking API.

The shape of VR has changed from headsets being simple 3D glasses to full room scale systems running multiple services in OS background. The problem is that the core of the VRidge remained mostly the same and if you ever worked on a big project, you know that when goals and requirements shift, the project maintainability suffers. The VRidge was designed with pre-release Oculus headsets in mind when there were no controllers or room scale lighthouse systems. And those legacy foundations slow us down a lot.

Core rework

That's why we are currently doing major rewrite of the VRidge core. It's actually going pretty good and we already made a lot of progress. In our development version VRidge was decoupled from SteamVR launch flow. We dropped that annoying chain of dependencies that required restarting all components (mobile, SteamVR, VRidge, Riftcat) when any of the mentioned components ran into some sort of problem. We can start and stop SteamVR/VRidge at any time and in any order - they will connect without problems. 

Another thing that rework enables is modular architecture. We can now substitute capture, encoding and output components during runtime. When we detect SteamVR connection being dropped, the stream automatically switches off to screen duplication stream. While it's not very useful at this moment (because VRidge doesn't have any Remote Desktop functions) it lays a solid foundation for future Fake VR. It can capture any window with very little overhead (<1% CPU usage, sub-frame latency, duplication tech stack very similar to Virtual Desktop, Bigscreen or OBS).

Another great thing that we already have working is a plug and play Moonlight support. It works as easy as possible. We have special VridgeView.exe that can be added to GameStream library in GeForce Experience panel. Then we simply start the VridgeView through Moonlight and it automatically connects to VRidge runtime and switches VRidge to fullscreen SBS output that is handled by Moonlight. And it works quite amazingly since as we said before - we think that NVIDIA GameStream + Moonlight pair is a "relationship goal" for any streaming software.

This also allows HDMI (or any video signal cable) output. You can use the VRidgeView.exe which will find its way to your chosen display and show VR on your device's display with no added latency. This is great thing for DIY fans that enjoy building their own HMDs.

We also want to unify Android rendering. Currently Gear VR and Android use completely different rendering engines. This makes it complicated because Daydream's immersive mode requires another VR renderer. We have a way to combine them all into one which would finally allow proper implementation of Daydream's immersive mode. We didn't want to write separate renderer for Daydream only because writing three things for three platforms that do essentially the same thing is a hell to maintain. With unified renderer, it should be a much less bumpy road.

We are also moving all settings to desktop app since adjusting some settings on the mobile makes absolutely no sense. Trying to adjust FOV with your headset off is an annoying guessing game.

Let's not forget iOS and possibly other mobile clients. This modular rework will remove a lot of spaghetti netcode which will then make it easier to port the mobile app over to iOS.

To sum things up, here's our current progress of the most important components:

☑ SteamVR driver connectivity rework (plug and play startup).

☑ Moonlight streaming support.

☑ HDMI output.

☑ High performance desktop capture engine for the future.

☑ Encoder quality settings adjustable on the fly.

☑ Encoder migration: NVENC.

☐ Encoder migration: MF (including AMD, Intel QS, Software).

☑ Network output

☐ Android network connectivity.

☑ Android decoder (not changed). 

☐ Android unified renderer. 

☐ Android background mode (for Moonlight mode tracking).

Scope of the work above is enough to call the reworked release VRidge 2.0 but those are only numbers without any other meaning than a label (no price changes or anything, everyone will get this update).

Since it's a major rework we cannot provide a testable version because Android connectivity wasn't migrated yet. Nonetheless we hope that this will allow us smoother development after most of legacy code is cleaned. During last year VR matured with a release of SteamVR and Oculus CVs. Controller interfaces are pretty well documented. VR environment APIs are pretty stable. With a more solid set of VR standards we are confident that we won't repeat the story pictured below:

by: Manu Comet

Sound progress

We planned to release it faster but we ran into some problems during testing on other machines. As it turns out - different sound chips use different audio formats so we are still testing and adapting to new motherboards/sound cards that we can find. After it's released to beta channel we will probably find some more bugs with exotic sound devices but that's what the beta channel is for.

SideloadVR & ConstructVR

Apparently SideloadVR is still online so we are going to update our Gear VR app on SideloadVR to match ConstructVR's latest version. It should be updated soon.

VRidge API changes

We are making some changes to VRidge API for next API release.

1. API call to re-center view.

2. Haptic feedback response for controllers.

3. A way to mark HMD trackers state as "out of tracking range".

Those changes were requested by 3rd party device manufacturers. The changes will be reflected in next week's API release on VRidge API GitHub.

Update release schedule

• VRidge API will be updated by the end of next week.
• Soon everything in current beta channel will move to stable channel. We want our stable version to be compatible with NOLO VR hardware when Kickstarter backers receive their units. 
• Sound and protocol changes will be deployed to beta as soon as they are release-ready. Most likely it will be released in early May.
• Core rework is estimated to be released to beta by the end of Q2, hopefully. It's our biggest change since release, but for a good reason.